


Obsidian Night

by Covenmouse



Series: The Lion's Roar [8]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route Spoilers, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Church Route Spoilers, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route Spoilers, Fix-It, Full Part Two Rewrite, Multi, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2020-10-20 15:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20677829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Covenmouse/pseuds/Covenmouse
Summary: One moment, the Monastery was the heart of Fodlan; the next, it lies a crumbling ruin stained with the blood of friends and foe alike.Byleth’s absence has been felt all who knew her, but by none more so Rhea, Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude. And at the center of the storm, the darkness lurking beneath Fodlan slithers ever forward toward the future it desires. Will Byleth’s return be enough to unite them, once and for all, against the unseen hands which bind them, or will the star that lights the darkness finally burn out?





	1. P1-CH1, Wish Upon a Star

**Author's Note:**

> This is best read **after** [WiseBlood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20509295)! Though I do my best to recount previous works when they're necessary, there was a lot changed by this series that feeds into everything at this point. Just to reiterate: this series is a canon divergence. Though I borrow many set pieces and plot points, fundamental things have been changed from canon, and will continue to be changed. Thank you for your patience and consideration. <3

# PART ONE: THE STAR THAT FELL

_ ‘Hickory, oak, pine and weed _   
_ Bury my heart underneath these trees _   
_ And when a southern wind comes to raise my soul _   
_ Spread my spirit like a flock of crows _   
_ … _   
_ Old heat of a raging fire _   
_ Come and light my eyes _   
_ Summer's kiss thru electric wire _   
_ But I'll never die’ _   
_ \- _Delta Rae, I Will Never Die

## CHAPTER ONE: WISH UPON A STAR

**Day 25 Ethereal Moon, Year 1180**

With the chandeliers lit and candelabra flickering in every corner, the entrance hall of the monastery has been transformed from a beautiful, imposing edifice of the Church’s power into… well, it’s _ still _ a beautiful, imposing edifice to the Church’s power, Byleth supposes, but it feels warmer this way; more welcoming and alive. The music helps.

Staged upon a dais erected in the upper wing, a small ensemble of musicians play the delicate, whimsical tunes of the sort favoured by the upper echelons. Beneath them, between the massive columns supporting the lofted ceiling, students and guests twirl together in a manner a little too restricted and formal for Byleth’s tastes. Nonetheless, it is a sight to behold. 

She stands off to one side, watching as Dimitri spins a nameless girl from Golden Deer across the floor. He’s danced with just about everyone tonight, except Byleth. She isn’t certain if that is on purpose or merely because she doesn’t look interested. 

Or perhaps it is only self preservation. Byleth’s cheeks colour slightly at the memory of her “coaching” Flayn during their practice for the White Heron Cup. In truth, it had been the other way around. Still, Flayn must have gotten something out of the ordeal—she’d won, afterall.

Byleth snags a fresh flute of the non-alcoholic sparkling cider from one of the servers making their way around. Not for the first time, she wishes it were proper beer or ale; the sort you’d find in a layman’s tavern. Though she’s never been one to get drunk, the delicate sharpness of this drink is yet another reminder that there’s something off about this world of filigree and glass. More and more, she grows tired of feeling like she’s going to break everything around her simply by being herself.

“That is far too serious a face for a party, Teach,” Claude sighs with reproachful humor. He steps up at her side, turning a sly grin her way that, as per usual, doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “I have to admit I’m surprised. Never imagined you for the wallflower type.”

“Wallflower?”

“What? Never heard that expression?” She shakes her head and Claude chuckles airily. “A ‘wallflower’ is someone who’s being shy, hiding themselves away in a corner and not asking anyone to dance.”

His gaze shifts back to the dance floor. The next set is about to start, and across the room yet another girl has approached Dimitri. His last partner looks a touch put out as he accepts the newcomer’s invitation with his usual, polite smile. 

Byleth almost misses Claude’s quiet comment, “Even when they really want to.”

She drains her glass, careful to keep her expressionless mask in place. There are too many eyes in this room; too many people able and waiting to see the truth written plain across her face, should she let it slip. 

Claude laughs again, and when she looks back he has his hand extended to her. “Come on then. Indulge me?”

“I’ll step on your feet.”

“Some pain is worthwhile.”

“As you wish.”

Byleth places the empty flute on a collection table and takes his hand. The dance has already begun by this point, but Claude draws her easily into the brace of his arms like someone who was born to it. In a sense, he had been. 

“I think someone taught you to lead,” he teases, gently correcting her posture as they move into the throng of dancers. 

“Flayn is smaller than me,” Byleth says, shrugging and immediately regretting it as the extra gesture makes her lose count. She stumbles, Claude pulls her back into step.

“That she is,” he says, then winces as Byleth stomps directly on his toe. 

“Sorry.”

“I knew the risks—Ah! Okay, you really weren’t kidding.” He pauses them as he shakes his foot out. She’d managed to hit the same spot twice.

This was a mistake. Byleth mutters an apology as she pulls away, intent on retreating back to her corner. Claude catches her hand, tugging her to a stop. “Hold on, there, Teach. Come on, we can sort this out.”

“H-here? Everyone else—”

“Will understand.” Gently, Claude pulls her back into his arms. “Here. Just set your grip like this and watch our feet if you need to.”

“That’s not the problem.”

“What is?”

“This music. The beat’s all… _ wrong _.”

“Is it?” Claude tips his head to one side, listening. “I mean it’s a bit slow, but it’s there. Let’s see…”

He begins to hum along. As he guides her back into the music, he taps the beat onto her hand. Byleth lets herself concentrate on that, rather than the people staring and the spectacle of it all. She has a couple more missteps, but Claude doesn’t stop his humming or careful guidance; he lets her recover, and when the song ends, he pulls her along into the next without a single word between them. 

“There. You’re getting the hang of it,” he says about halfway through the second. The smile he turns on her is so bright Byleth can’t help but reciprocate. 

“Only because you helped.”

“You’ve taught us all a lot. Figured it was my turn to give something back. Particularly as I’m gearing up to ask you for a favour later down the road.”

“And what favour might that be?”

“Oh, you’ll find out eventually.”

“Claude.”

“Don’t sound so worried, Teach. I just need a bit more time to work out the details first.” The conspiratorial wink following this statement does nothing to soothe Byleth’s worries. In fact, they double down. 

“I won’t poison anyone for you.”

“Professor! I’m shocked. Scandalized. _ Hurt _,” said Claude in a tone that’s anything but, “Why would you even think something like that?”

She raised both eyebrows at him.

“No, seriously, that’s what Raphael’s for. I don’t even have to worry about keeping the food separated; that guy has the constitution of a demonic beast.”

Byleth tries to stifle a tiny smile. Claude’s grows bigger at the sight of it; though she can’t help noticing how his gaze remains serious. 

“In all seriousness, Professor, I really don’t think you’ll disapprove. It’s just a bit premature to go blathering about it in the middle of…”

He trails off as the song comes to an end and they have to pause and clap with everyone else. Before Claude can pick the conversation back up, someone clears their throat.

“Excuse my temerity, please, but I was hoping I might claim the next dance with our dear Professor?” 

Edelgard’s white gloved hand extends gracefully toward Byleth. 

Claude puts on a wistful air. “I should’ve known I wouldn’t be able to keep you all to myself tonight. Have at, Teach. Just remember…”

He draws away, lifting his hands in the dancing square as he hums and twirls himself away, clearly using Edelgard’s request as an excuse to get out of the conversation. The maneuver ends with a bow to Marrianne as Claude asks her for the next dance. 

Shaking her head at his antics, Byleth turns her attention back to the girl still waiting, patiently, on her attention. “Am I supposed to lead?”

“Do you wish to?”

“I think I’m more comfortable not…”

“Hm. Now that is a surprise,” says Edelgard, the smallest of smiles crossing her lips. “But no matter. I am quite used to taking leadership.”

With that, Byleth takes Edelgard’s hand and allows the girl to lead her into the next song. 

“For all the trouble you had at the start, you seem to be a very fast learner, Professor.”

“Flayn taught me before the ball, to an extent. It is different with a partner nearer my own height, however.”

“An astute observation,” agreed Edelgard. Her gaze grows distant, the sparkle in her eyes dimming. “Most of my partners tend to be taller. The only one who was nearer to my height was a boy I taught to dance years ago. And yourself, of course.”

Catching the way Edelgard’s gaze darts over her shoulder at the mention of a boy, Byleth guesses, “Hubert?”

“Not quite, no.” There’s a moment as Edelgard’s expression dims further still, before the girl’s usual, guarded countenance returns. “Anyway, that is long in the past and far beyond mattering. I had actually been hoping for a moment to ask you something important to our present.”

Byleth starts to ask if the girl wants her to poison someone, and bites her tongue. Neither Edelgard nor Claude would appreciate the running joke, for very different reasons. “What’s on your mind?”

A pause as Edelgard guides Byleth into a spin. When they return to facing one another, there’s a strange little smile on Edelgard’s face which Byleth doesn’t know how to read. “Now that I have you to myself, I hesitate to bring it up. For all that there are serious matters which require our attention, tonight has been lovely. I should hate to ruin it.”

“If it’s something serious, I would rather know.”

“You would, wouldn’t you? We are much the same in that way, I think. All right, then. After this song, if you would take a walk around the courtyard with me?”

It’s a simple agreement to make, particularly as Byleth is still uncomfortable upon the dancefloor. Though it is likely her own paranoia, she feels as though eyes are following her every move. When the set ends, she is glad to let Edelgard lead her through the crowd and out into the cool night air. 

The open courtyard just outside the entrance hall’s upper floor is quiet and relatively empty as they walk through. Light spills in from the ball, casting golden pools across frost-bitten grass that move and sway with the shadows of students passing before the windows. Above them, a fat, silver moon is just cresting the gabled rooftops, adding a little more light for the pair to see by. 

Byleth has never had much trouble seeing in dim light; a fact which has given pause to the few people who’ve noticed. But Edelgard doesn’t seem to have any trouble, either. They move past benches where students are cuddled together with various amounts of giggling between them, before finally coming to a pause on the deserted pathway between the abbey and schoolrooms. 

Edelgard presses her back to a pillar. In the shadows, the lightness of her pale violet eyes give the illusion of a faint glow as she regards Byleth. 

“I was wondering if I might ask your thoughts on the recent events.”

Byleth wraps her arms about her middle to ward off the early winter chill, mirroring Edelgard’s pose against the pillar opposite her. “Which ones?”

A strange little smile flickers across Edelgard’s lips. “Mm. That _ is _ the question, is it not? This year has been quite troubled. Beginning with our previous professor’s murder at the hands of bandits, then Lord Lonato’s rebellion against the Church. The Western Church’s attempted thievery and assassination of the Archbishop. Young Flayn being kidnapped and held hostage, alongside a girl who’d gone missing last year. And then that business in Remire. It is quite the list.”

It is, Byleth has to agree. She cannot help but notice that Edelgard has missed a few incidents, but does not bother filling her in. Miklain’s fate isn’t well known to the monastery population. Perhaps it ought to be, but keeping it to themselves was Rhea’s decision; a bridge Byleth is not yet ready to burn.

“I’ve been wondering if you have considered whether or not these incidents are connected?”

Byleth tips her head as though it’s only now crossed her mind. She has, in fact, considered that; quite often, actually. However, it seems a strange question for Edelgard to ask.

Then again, the girl hadn’t been there for any of these events. She was being fed information through rumors and gossip, and Byleth could understand anyone in a position of power—however middling—being uneasy about having no direct source. Perhaps it was more interesting that Claude _ hasn’t _asked. 

“Indeed. But I still feel we should approach this with care,” says Sothis. The girl’s voice and presence come on abruptly, as always. Byleth has grown so used to it she doesn’t even react, except to silently agree. 

“Some,” Byleth finally says.

“And?”

“I think it would be foolish to assume much at this point. Though there are a few matters which seem obvious.”

“Such as?”

“_ Many _ of these incidents were absolutely orchestrated by either a single organization, or allied organizations.”

“Interesting. I would have said the opposite,” says Edelgard, voice polite and so precisely measured it seems clear she’s less than pleased with Byleth’s answer. “It seems more likely to me that we are dealing with completely seperate groups.”

“Why is that?”

“None of the incidents share an obvious agenda, for starters. With the exception of Lonato’s rebellion and the mausoleum invasion, of course. I think the connection there is obvious, but the rest do not have a connecting element. Unless you mean to propose that the Western Church is allied with the monsters who poisoned Remire.” 

Byleth frowns. Though Sothis had warned her to be careful, she can’t quite help herself after such a statement. The truth slips out, “That’s the one thing I’m certain is true, actually.”

“Really?” Edelgard’s expression barely changes, but there is a decidedly dangerous tone in her voice as she asks, “You would call them all ‘heretics,’ then, I suppose?”

“I don’t know enough about religion to call anyone a heretic,” Byleth counters, and immediately flinches at the sound of a banged door and laughter from somewhere else in the monastery. That isn’t the sort of comment it is safe to make here; she should mind herself. 

“Then why…?”

“Edelgard,” Byleth says, then hesitates. Part of her knows she shouldn’t be bothering to argue this. Not here, certainly, and not with someone she doesn’t know very well. But then, had she not promised her father she would let the students in more? Byleth has been trying, these past few months, to do so. It was not easy. Still, she owed it to them to try… she owed it to her Lions, and perhaps to others as well. 

Besides, if these groups were dangerous, then Edelgard—as the crown princess of the Empire—deserved to have some idea of what was going on; right? At least so far as Dimitri did. “Many of the incidents you mentioned share commonalities. Not ones you would have picked up on from rumors or recountings, maybe, but they’re there.”

“Such as?”

“The Death Knight is a big one. He’s been present at most of them. I know for a fact that he works directly for the one calling themselves the Flame Emperor.”

“That does not mean these are the same organizations.”

“No,” Byleth agrees. “But it does mean that the groups are aware of each other, and at least one is willing to _ help _ the others accomplish their goals. It doesn’t matter if this Flame Emperor approved of Remire or not. They backed the ploy with their resources. That makes them complicit.”

Edelgard’s voice is just a little too tight as she says, “That is true. However, it is possible they had no idea of their ally’s intent.”

“It’s possible.” Byleth thinks back to the moments after Remire when, as she stood on the spot Solon had abandoned only moments before, the Flame Emperor appeared just beyond her immediate reach. “Funny you should mention that, actually. They did offer a truce… in a manner of speaking.”

“Did they?”

Byleth nods. “They said they would help us to hunt down those responsible for Remire.”

“Such an alliance could have been very beneficial.”

“It could have. But when I agreed, they retracted the offer. They assumed I was lying.”

An uneasy silence fills the space between them. Finally, Edelgard asks in a strange, almost shocked sort of voice, “Weren’t you?”

“No.”

“But you just said—”

“That I hold them partially responsible for Remire?” At Edelgard’s nod, Byleth sighs. “I do. And I’m not sure how Lady Rhea would have felt about it. But it would have been an opportunity to sow division between these groups, at the least, and at best remove one enemy from consideration. Not that it matters now.”

“I had no idea you were so… _ pragmatic _, professor.”

Anxiety ripples like electricity over Byleth’s skin. Though Edelgard doesn’t sound disapproving, she has always been a difficult one to read. Suddenly, Byleth begins to regret being so open with someone outside of her Lions.

“I’ve listened to a lot of strategy meetings,” Byleth says, attempting to shrug it away. 

As though reading her mind, Edelgard asks, “You think that I disapprove?”

“Do you?”

“No. Quite the opposite, in fact. Though I am still not sure I agree with your judgement of this Flame Emperor’s involvement, I respect your position on the matter. It… would have been quite interesting, had they not jumped to conclusions.”

Before Byleth can form a response, Edelgard continues more softly, “But given your assertion that one is responsible for the actions of their allies, I must wonder, had you been allowed to follow through with this alliance, would you then be responsible for whatever sins the Flame Emperor committed afterward?”

“If I allowed it to happen? If I committed my resources to their cause, sight unseen? Yes.”

“I see.” 

Once more, the silence between them is broken by the noise of students passing somewhere nearby. Edelgard stares at the door nearest them, currently closed but likely to fly open at any moment. “Thank you, Professor. We should probably return to the ball, should we not? We will surely have been missed by this juncture.”

Byleth nods, but says, “Go ahead.”

“Professor?”

“I just need a bit of air, still. I’ll catch up.”

Edelgard nods, her expression unreadable in the dim light, before she leaves Byleth alone to her thoughts. 

“Well she was certainly not lying about her question being a serious one,” comments Sothis, “But what brought that on, I wonder?”

Byleth shrugs, shaking her head in wonder. 

“Are you truly planning to stay out here alone? There is dancing inside. _ Dancing _.”

Frowning, Byleth pushes off the pillar she’d been leaning against and walks further away from the ball, filled with it’s mellow music and staring eyes. 

_ <<If there were _ proper _ dancing, I’d go back.>> _

“Dancing is dancing. If I had a body of my own, I would not leave until sunrise.”

_ <<I don’t think it goes on that long.>> _

“That is hardly the point. Besides, what do you know of proper dancing? You never participated in the village dances.”

<<Yes I did! Daddy taught us—>>

The strangeness of that thought catches them both off-guard. There had been plenty of village festivals the Company attended over the years. Most were harvest based, though a few spring barn raisings had been thrown into the mix. Byleth was quite familiar with the line dances and the rounding sets where no one had a “partner,” per say, but rather wove through the crowd to a rowdy beat. 

The songs played for these dances were fast, and familiar, and often accompanied by lyrics that were silly and a bit vulgar, bordering on the obscene. And she never once participated, though she had always thought ‘one day.’ It seemed too fast; too reminiscent of something… something on the periphery of her recollection… 

Her toe catches on a loose tile and Byleth pinwheels. She puts her foot back to steady herself, only to find that the ground is further down than it ought to be and—

“Careful!” 

Warm arms close around her as she hits a solid, warm chest. Dimitri wavers only slightly slightly beneath her weight. “Careful,” he repeats, more softly. “Are you all right, Professor?”

She finds the ground beneath her feet again, but remains pressed against him as she looks, wide-eyed, at her surroundings. For a moment, the world is a confusing jumble of an unfamiliar courtyard, staircases, high walls, and silver moonlight reflected off glass windows. 

Then she sees the Goddess Tower, tall and dark against the dazzling night sky. She swallows as she realizes that she’s on the stairs leading to the upper cathedral plaza; not terrible, in and of itself, except she can’t remember walking all the way out here. She’d just been in the courtyard, had she not?

“Professor?” Dimitri whispers again. It’s enough to snap her senses enough to realize she’s still in his arms, one hand pressed to his chest for balance, and his lips close enough that if she leaned a slight degree further… 

“Sorry.” She takes a step up the stairs, pulling free of his arms. “I, um, I-I was a bit disoriented.”

“Do not apologize. I was only worried.” He steps up beside her and bends to pick up the bit of brick that worked its way loose from the stairs. He wedges it back into place. “We’ll have to report this. Someone could have been seriously injured, particularly this far up.”

“I suppose I was lucky you came out here. Er. What _ are _you doing out here?”

“I…” Dimitri clears his throat. By the moonlight, she can see his gaze drift past her toward the tower rising precariously from the cliffside. She turns, and together they walk slowly in its direction. “I could say that I was looking for you. I was also looking for an excuse to leave.”

“Really? It seemed like you were having a good time. You hardly left the dance floor.” 

“Precisely,” he says with a grim touch of humor, “These sort of affairs do not suit me. I do not wish to begrudge anyone a dance—it would not be mannerly of me—but I’ve never truly wanted to dance with anyone… Erm. Actually, that isn’t quite true.”

Byleth pulse jumps, and she tamps it down again. In a mental voice which isn’t Sothis’ but sounds remarkably like the girl, Byleth chides herself not to be silly. Dimitri wouldn’t mean her. 

“Oh?”

“There are two people I would have been happy to dance with,” he confesses, “Neither would be appropriate. Though propriety did not stop them from dancing with one another, as it turns out. Then disappearing together. I became a trifle worried when one returned, and the other did not.”

Dimitri’s smile is wistful as he catches her eye, and a strange sort of warmth spreads from her head to her toes. 

“Edelgard, huh?” She asks, unable to help herself. The two always seemed more at odds than anything else; though she had to admit Edelgard was the more hostile of the pair.

“Does that surprise you?” He sounds mildly amused. “I suppose it would, things as they are. As it happens, she is actually the one who taught me to dance.”

Byleth startles in surprise. Edelgard’s comment from earlier, the wistful look, suddenly register with a new meaning.

“I didn’t think you knew each other that well.”

What amusement was in his tone is washed away in an instant. Byleth wishes she could wipe away the words, choose some other response instead. “We did, and we did not.”

On the bridge to the tower, Dimitri slows to a pause, turning to look out over the mountainside stretching below them. “I told you before that she is my stepsister, did I not?”

Stopping beside him, Byleth leans against the bridge railing. “Yes. I thought you said you were raised without knowledge of one another?”

“Technically, yes. I was not told the truth of her parentage until some time later. When we met, she was merely a ‘ward’ of our uncle come with him into exile during the Parliament's coup.”

When Byleth still looks confused, he chuckles softly. “I forget how isolated you were, at times. My apologies. Surely, Ferdinand has told you about his father’s position as Prime Minister?”

“At length. Though I was under the impression this was a long-standing arrangement.”

“Not by most standards, no. It was just about nine years ago, now. Seven of the Empire’s most powerful nobles banded together to wrest power from the Emperor. I’m told it was a soft coup, as they go; relatively bloodless. They kept him as a figurehead, installing a council they call the ‘Parliament’ to keep order. Ferdinand’s father is the nominal head of that group.”

“I take it your uncle was not inclined toward their rule?”

“To my understanding, no, though he eventually made peace with them and returned, with Edelgard, to the Empire. It was only after they left that I found out she was my stepmother’s daughter, and the Empire’s rightful heir. To be honest, I am not entirely certain she was ever told her mother had married my father. She may not yet know the truth.”

He takes a deep breath, gaze focused on the moon inching toward it’s zenith above them. “When I first met her, she seemed… bored. With everything. I found her to be difficult and stubborn, but that facade quickly fell away, revealing the truth beneath.”

“The truth?” Unable to help herself, Byleth thinks back to the strange conversation she’d had with the girl only a short while before.

He chuckles. “She would not thank me for waxing on about that. But she was a good friend. And a strict teacher. When she found out I didn’t know the first thing about dancing, around the time of my first royal ball no less, she told me I was failing in my duty as a prince, and that she would have to correct such an oversight. The next thing I knew I was drafted into lessons every day, often lasting until the sun was down.”

Dimitri smiles and Byleth finds herself fascinated with how the moonlight sets his features aglow. For a brief moment, he looks like the young man he should be; carefree and happy, without the hint of darkness lurking in those beautiful, sky-blue eyes. 

The moment fades sooner than it ought. His smile dips by degrees as his voice turns somber. “Those were the best days of my life, in many ways. Heh. It’s kind of pathetic to think about it all these years later. But can you guess what I gave her as a parting gift?”

“A dagger?” she guesses, internally wincing.

“That obvious, was it?”

“Felix has made mention of it a time or two. As has Sylvain. And Ingrid.”

He laughs. “I am beginning to think I shall never live that one down.”

“Certainly not if you keep telling people about it.”

“I’m not telling ‘people’, I’m telling _ you _ ,” he shoots back with a smile that freezes as soon as he realizes how the words have come out. “Ah! Professor, I am quite sorry. I did not mean to imply that you are not a person, only that—that is to say, I would not simply tell _ anyone _ such a story.”

Byleth swallows back the multitude of responses she could be having—including not an insignificant amount of hurt, given their previous discussions of her emotionless-seeming state—and merely nods. “I know.”

Dimitri clears his throat. “If you would prefer me to leave—”

She shakes her head, and puts a hand lightly upon his arm. She removes it again as quickly, realizing how forward that is. “Why a dagger? To protect her?”

“Ah. Um, no. Not precisely.” Dimitri settles his elbows on top of the stone railing, pressing his lips briefly together as he thinks. “In Faerghus, we consider blades a tool of destiny. They serve as a means to cut a path to a better future. I did not know, then, of Edelgard’s precise troubles. She did not speak of them, and I was instructed not to ask for fear of upsetting her. But I hoped—I believed the dagger could help her find her way to the future she desired. One where she could be happy.”

He shakes his head, a false smile lighting upon his lips. “That was all a long time ago. I’m sure she’s forgotten all about the boy I was back then.”

_ No _ , Byleth thinks, _ she most certainly has not. _

Though a part of her squirms at the suggestion, Byleth still says, “You know it isn’t too late, right? She’s down there, right now. You could go… ask her to dance.”

He turns to look at her, his hair falling over his eyes at just the right angle to cast them into shadow. Still, Byleth thinks she can feel him examining her, wondering at something. 

Finally, he says, “I’m afraid it’s too late for all that. Things are different now. She’s different. I’m different.”

Byleth wants to simply nod and let things be, and yet something about the helplessness of that statement won’t allow her to stay silent. Not this time. “I’m sure that’s true. People don’t often stay the same, for better or worse. But if we let those differences become an unsurpassable gap between us, then… we’d all just end up alone.”

“I suppose you have a point,” he says quietly, before standing again. His gaze drifts up to the goddess tower rising into the heavens above them. From this angle, now, it looks like the very tip could pierce the rising moon. “Midnight,” he says, just as the cathedral bell begins its dreary toll. 

“I think we’re supposed to make a wish,” Byleth says, and immediately colours.

But Dimitri is smiling. “You know the story, then?”

“It has been mentioned a few times this month.” A few _ hundred _times, more like. The legend about bonds being forged at the Goddess Tower at midnight the day of its completion was romantic enough to catch the attention of most every resident of the monastery, and many beyond. It was a wonder they’d ended up out here alone. Byleth had expected the entire ball to end here.

“That is quite fair. Still, I had not thought you would be the sort to buy into such things.”

“You don’t, I take it?”

“Wishes granted by the Goddess?” Dimitri scoffs. He shakes his head as he strides forward the last few steps to the tower’s door. “The Goddess just watches over us from above. That is all.”

Once again, his voice drops as his fingers graze over the stout, unyielding wood. He does not seem to notice or care as Byleth comes up slowly behind him. “No matter how much someone begs to be saved… she would never so much as offer her hand.

“Even if she did, we lack the means to reach out and grasp it.”

Without knowing precisely what moves her to do so, Byleth finds herself reaching out to cover his hand with hers. Dimitri looks up, startled to find her so close. He does not pull away.

“Let’s pretend, then. Pretend it’s real. What would you wish for?”

“What would I wish for?” The corner of his mouth rises in a wistful, sad smile that tears at her heartstrings. She remembers his family, his friends, dead all around him. She remembers the hundreds that died in their wake for someone’s twisted idea of ‘vengeance.’ 

“My wish? I suppose… I would have to wish for a world in which no one would unjustly be taken from us.”

The words settle into her bones, filling her with a sadness both sweet and terrible. It’s a silly thing; a wish they both know will never come true. It still makes Byleth glad to hear it, to know how easily this man would gift away a Goddesses’ boon if he could.

“There it is again,” he says, and his free hand rises to gently touch her cheek. “That smile.”

Byleth dips her head, her smile widening into a grin though her face burns like a brand. She thanks the Goddess for the darkness of the night, that might hide it. 

Fortunately or unfortunately, moving her head causes Dimitri’s fingers to drift up her cheek. He takes the opportunity to scoop her hair back behind her ear and chuckles faintly. “How about you, Professor? What do you wish?”

“I think… I’d wish for _ your _ wish to come true.”

She glances up in time to see Dimitri’s eyes narrow, his smile teasing as he leans in. Her breath catches in her throat. Is he going to—

Dimitri boops her nose. “That’s cheating.”

Startled, Byleth laughs. “It is not!”

“It is!” He straightens again, grinning at her, “As this is a game of pretend, we make our own rules. I say the rule is that _ you _have to have your own wish.”

“Who said you get to make rules now?”

“I hate to be the one bringing this up, but I _ am _ a prince.”

“Ohhh, well, then, since you _ are _ a _ prince _,” Byleth drawls, unable to keep the laugh from her voice. She takes a deep breath, searching frantically for some wish that they won’t regret the instant she says it. 

Most of the easy choices are along that vein, varying from something as horrendously ill-advised as ‘I wish you would kiss me,’ to as impossible as ‘I wish we could stay together forever.’ Life goes on. Dimitri is a prince. She is a mercenary. Or, at best, she a professor. Either way, they have no future together; a fact of which they are each well aware.

Part of her wants to find something selfless, a ‘grand gesture’ wish to match his own, but Byleth realizes she’d prefer something simpler, over all. Something that might make him laugh again.

“I wish,” Byleth finally says, leaning into poke his chest in a most undignified manner, “That you will learn to call me by my given name, one day.”

“Ah, but you will always be my Professor,” he teases, and in the last, dying toll of cathedral bells it almost sounds like an endearment.

“Hey, I didn’t make fun of your wish.”

“You’re right, and I apologize,” Dimitri agrees with a chuckle. He glances at their hands, still joined upon the door of the Goddess Tower.

Taking the seeming hint, Byleth removes hers only for him to catch it. Gaze locked with Byleth’s, Dimitri gives her fingers a gentle squeeze, drawing them up toward his lips as though to kiss her hand. “Byleth. I think I could get used to that… once this year is over?”

“I thought we were just pretending?”

“Well, yes. But if I have the power to make your wish come true, should I not at least try?”


	2. Children of Blood and Bone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three months after the ball, the Blue Lions prepare to enter a heretofore unheard of tomb deep beneath the monastery.

**Day 24 Lone Moon, Year 1180 — Three Months Later**

Their footsteps echo off the walls of the mausoleum like a blasphemous anthem of the living in this realm of the dead. It hadn’t felt so wrong the first time they came here, the night of the Western Church’s attempted robbery. Perhaps that is itself the difference. So much has changed since then, it’s difficult to tell.

Their previous visit had been with a purpose Byleth understood and agreed with: “stop the thieves.” This time their mission is more nebulous and, Byleth must admit, the direct result of her lies. There is no reason to be here, waiting on Rhea to reveal the path to yet another tomb buried even further beneath the cathedral. 

No reason… except  _ one _ .

Rhea believes Byleth can channel the spirit of her mother, the Goddess. She has not realized the truth: that the dead grandchild she thought to save some twenty-odd years before had never been among the living in the first place. By gifting the fresh, empty corpse Sothis’ immortal heart, Rhea had succeeded not in creating a vessel to channel her mother’s spirit, but in the full resurrection of the Goddess herself.

If Byleth believed Rhea was more interested in the vessel than her granddaughter, perhaps it would be easy to say the words Rhea needs to hear. However, she remembers too well the vision of Rhea collapsed over her own daughter’s blood-stained bed, begging for reassurance that she’d done the right thing in killing Hestia to save the child. Telling her the truth—would it be a mercy, or a punishment?

Absently, Byleth rubs the place just above her motionless draconic heart, and wonders. 

“The Holy Tomb,” whispers Mercedes as she paces a slow circle around the dais near Seiros’ empty sarcophagus. Her gaze drifts curiously around the Mausoleum, looking for any sign of where they might be going. “I’ve never even heard of such a place.”

“Neither have I,” says Ashe. His voice is equally subdued in this place, suffuse with intermingled awe and worry. He starts to lean against a pillar, then quickly thinks better of it; glancing around guiltily as though he expects someone to begin shouting over his disrespect. “Do you think—No. That can’t be it.”

“If you’re going to say something like that, you may as well spit it out.” Felix shoots Ashe a scathing look. It’s clear to Byleth, if no one else, that his annoyance is a mask to take attention off the slight tremble to his fingers. Worrisome. Felix is not easily shaken, but something about this place has him concerned.

“Ah—sorry!” Ashe clears his throat. “It’s just that, well, I did read once that the last time the Goddess gifted a hero with her power they were also given a vision, but some of the books in Lonato’s library said it took a few days not—”

Felix cuts him off with an impatient wave of his hand. “Right. That would be why the Professor is down here. To do the whole ‘vision’ nonsense.”

Despite the deference in his tone, Ashe looks ready to defend himself—a subtle but sizeable change that had come over him these past few months. He isn’t given the chance. Sylvain drops an arm around Felix’s shoulders, leaning enough weight on the smaller boy that Felix grunts. At his back, the tines of the Lance of Ruin sway with his motion. 

“Don’t mind Fee, Ashe. He’s just scared of the ghosts.”

“How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that? And I am not scared.”

“Ghosts?!” Bernadetta squeaks, dancing further away from the shadows into the lighted area where they’ve gathered. She runs right up to Byleth’s side, bow clutched awkwardly in both hands. “Nobody said anything about there being ghosts down here! You said it was going to be easy! Just standing around pretending to guard you.”

“I haven’t heard about there being ghosts down here,” says Mercedes, who seems far too delighted by the prospect. “Though I suppose it is not surprising. This would be a perfect place for them.”

“There aren’t any ghosts,” Ingrid says firmly, gesturing to where Bernadette continues to babble in a relatively mild fit of hysteria. “This is a holy place. Holy places do not have ghosts. Right?”

When no one backs her up she repeats with more emphasis and another gesture at Bernadetta, “Right?”

“Arguably, the whole monastery is holy ground,” says Ignatz. 

“So?”

“So there  _ are  _ ghosts in the abbey.” Like Mercedes, he doesn’t seem overly bothered by this. Rather, he adjusts his glasses as he takes a closer look at a nearby statue, adding, “Everyone knows that. It would therefore make sense for there to be ghosts here as well.”

Bernadetta moans in fear. 

“Everyone does not know that,” counters Ingrid.

“I most certainly did not,” agrees Dedue.

“Because ghosts aren’t real,” says Ingrid.

“That remains to be seen,” Dedue counters. Ingrid throws him an exasperated look.

“It’s alright, Bernie,” Mercedes says, coming around Byleth to put calming hands on Bernadetta’s shoulders. “The ghosts can’t really hurt you. They’re just spirits, roaming the world looking to fulfil their unfinished business.”

“Unfinished business?” Dimitri asks quietly.

“But they’re scary!” Bernadetta wails again, sounding not unlike a spirit herself thanks to the cavernous echo. 

“What are you talking about, Mercy? I know you tell stories, but I thought they were just that.” Annette backs slowly toward Felix, who puts out a hand to keep her from bumping into him. She squeaks, glancing up to be sure it’s him. 

Byleth ought to intervene before this spirals further out of hand. She doesn’t. It’s like her mouth has been sealed, much the same as it was in the days following the self-inflicted lobotomy she’d performed so many years ago. Her gaze flicks instead to Dimitri, begging him with her eyes to step in on her behalf. But he seems just as lost in his own world as she is; brow drawn and gaze distant, though it flicks from person to person as they speak. 

Nearby, Flayn and Leonie are both watching silently. Flayn seems abnormally wary of the situation, fingers wrapped tight around the Caduceus Staff, while Leonie’s attention is focused alternately on the good-natured squabbling, and the shadows of the room. Byleth hadn’t thought she’d be one to believe in ghosts.

“There aren’t any ghosts,” Felix assures Annette. “I just don’t see the point of being down here.”

“It is sort of creepy,” Annette says softly.

Felix looks affronted. “That’s  _ not  _ what I—”

“It’s the Mausoleum of Saint Seiros. I don’t think you’re supposed to call it creepy,” says Ignatz, sounding a touch indignant and like he’d prefer to agree. 

“Not that she’s actually down here,” grouses Felix.

“Maybe the ghosts took her body.” Sylvain leans closer into Felix with a sly grin, but it’s Annette’s shoulder that receives his teasing poke. “Or maybe she still wanders the underground chambers. Maybe that’s why this place is closed up so much.”

“Sylvain!” Annette whines, “Why do you have to say such things? That’s horrible!”

“Hey, I’m just working this whole ghost story angle. You don’t actually believe any of it, do you?”

Mercedes turns a worried frown on Sylvain. “I’m not sure we should be talking about Saint Seiros in such a way… but they  _ do _ say there’s a ghostly woman sometimes seen wandering through the monastery late at night.”

Bernadetta wails again, gluing herself to Byleth’s side as the rest of the group goes quiet to listen to Mercedes’ story. Byleth barely notices. She’s too caught up in the image of a dark-haired, blue-eyed woman humming at her bedside.

“No one really knows why she’s here, and sightings are often brief. Some say she walks calmly through the halls, seemingly unaware of the blood staining her gown. Others say stalks the corridors, weeping and rattling at doorknobs in an attempt to find something… or someone.”

Finally, Byleth’s lips come unglued. Into the resulting silence, she says, “Ashe, what were you going to say about the—”

The mausoleum doors swing open with a bang, causing several members of their group to jump and shriek. Claude’s eyebrows raise as he strides over. “You know, you’ll never get away with it if you go around acting guilty as all that.”

“Get away with what?” asks Dimitri.

“Whatever it is you’re planning that’s got you all spooked. Oh—don’t bother denying it. I don’t judge.”

“We were waiting on the Archbishop,” Dimitri replies, pulling himself from his thoughts in time to frown at Claude. “Which I’m certain you know given where we are.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m here.” Claude dismisses Dimitri with a wave of his hand that somehow manages to miss the mark of being “rude” by way of sheer charisma. He turns to Byleth. “She said to apologize for her tardiness. There’s something going on in town, but she’ll be along shortly.”

He pauses, gaze roaming over the gathered, before adding, “Edelgard isn’t here?”

“Is she supposed to be?” asks Byleth. 

“Couldn’t say for sure. When Lady Rhea asked me along, I sort of assumed Edelgard would be as well given what she’s trying.”

“What is she trying?”

“Ah. Are we still playing coy, Teach?”

For a bewildering, uncomfortable minute, Byleth truly believes Claude has figured out the truth. Then his gaze shifts from her to Dimitri. “It isn’t everyday a person gets to witness a Goddess-chosen hero receive their guiding vision. Lucky for us, right?

Byleth glanced between the pair, realization creeping in like a breeze beneath a door. 

Bringing her students along hadn’t been Byleth’s choice. She’d have rather done this alone, the better to—potentially—have a conversation with Rhea about matters at hand. It not that Byleth doesn’t trust her students with the truth. Rather, she doesn’t trust  _ anyone _ with the truth. Partially, that’s because it’s an enormous burden to bear, and partially because the longer she remains aware of her nature, the more uncomfortable she’s becoming with her surroundings.

Yes, Sothis is a Goddess. That didn’t mean she ever wanted anyone to worship her. Not like this.

Here and now, as Byleth, that desire is ten-fold. She wants her family and friends to be safe. She has no need of statues built in her honor, or knights swearing by her name.

So no, Byleth hadn’t wanted them to come along. Rhea insisted. It was always done with an honor guard, she said, and rather than break tradition, Byleth agreed. But the students were just as confused by all this as she was, and Claude’s inclusion in their number certainly paints a picture of why they’d been asked along at all. 

The dark look in Dimitri’s eyes is all the confirmation Byleth needs to know he’s also caught on to Claude’s meaning. 

“You don’t think—” he begins, just as the door opens once again. 

Rhea smiles serenely at them, seemingly heedless of Seteth’s scowl as the man marches along behind her. He leans in, hissing something in her ear just as Rhea is about to join them at the altar. 

“Shamir will return with news shortly,” she snaps, glaring at her brother. “Until then, there is not much we  _ can  _ do that hasn’t already been done. Allow me to get through this, and we may not need to take any further action.”

In a rare act of public defiance, Seteth replies, “I hope you know what you’re doing.” 

He glances up, meeting Byleth’s gaze long enough for a simple nod to her, before he storms back the direction they’d just come.

Dimitri takes a step forward. “Is everything all right, Your Grace?”

Rhea’s lips settle in a thin line, glancing between the two heirs and Byleth before she settles on the boys. “We do not yet believe there is any cause for concern, and I would prefer not to spread rumors. Has Edelgard not joined you?”

“Haven’t seen her all day,” says Claude.

“She has not been seen for three days,” Flayn puts in, more quietly.

“I see,” Rhea says. She falls quiet a moment, brow furrowed. Before Byleth can figure out what to say, however, Rhea is already shaking her head and moving toward a plain wall off to the left. “Then it will just be us, it seems. Follow me, please.”

Though the mausoleum doors are again closed, Byleth’s skin prickles as she turns away from them to do as ordered. The sensation of being watched is strong, and completely accurate. She  _ is _ being watched. All her Lions, and their guest, are waiting to see what she does in light of this upset to their expectations. Not even Rhea drawing a complicated pattern on the seemingly solid wall, and the bricks vanishing to reveal a stairwell into inky darkness, dissuades them. 

The Archbishop snaps her fingers, summoning a bright mote of clean, white light to hover over her shoulder. Only then does she look back at their group to see that they haven’t moved. “Byleth?”

There’s a pleaing note in Rhea’s voice that is unmistakable. She wants—she  _ needs _ —Byleth to play along with this farce. Not only for Rhea’s own peace of mind, but because there is something larger at play here; something with power. 

Something that has Rhea, and Seteth,  _ scared _ .

It’s that thought, more than any of the others, which convinces Byleth to take first one step, and then another toward that strange staircase. She will continue playing along. For now.

#

Their descent stretches the bounds of time. Darkness encases the stairwell before and behind them, their only source of light the little mote keeping pace just above Rhea’s shoulder. Beneath their feet the stairsteps change from brickwork, to mossy stone, to jade. Then, finally, a dim, greenish light appears in the distance. Hours and seconds later, they emerge into an even more cavernous room than the chamber above it; one that turns Byleth’s blood cold and dries her throat. 

Everything within the room, from the tiled floor to the carved and painted reliefs etched into the walls, from the columns supporting the distant roof to the sarcophagi lining the sides of the chamber is made of jade. Most is a strong, vibrant green, but accents of paler, milky jade, a beautiful rose-pink jade, and near obsidian-black jade are sprinkled throughout. A strange, sourceless light fills the room very much like an underwater chamber; ever fluctuating, casting odd shadows and making the reliefs seem to move.

At the far end, reigning supreme above it all, is the dias and the throne; the very same dias and throne Byleth had been seeing in her dreams for years. 

She needs no prompting from Rhea to approach it. Her feet want to go. Her hands ache to touch it, to assure herself that this is real. Fingers brush her sleeves, but don’t catch hold.

“Let her go,” she hears Rhea say somewhere far behind her. 

It’s the sarcophagi that stop her. She makes it down the one side of the split stairs leading into the burial pit, and pauses just shy of crossing the first of them. There’s no precise reason to stop, just a… sense. The vaguest, tired rumble of a familiar presence. 

Words are etched around the base of each sarcophagus in a script both familiar and foreign. She knows these words, does she not? Somewhere behind the cracking barrier attempting to keep her sane. 

“Oh,” she breaths as understanding hits. She turns to find her confused gaggle of students approaching slowly behind with Rhea at their head. The Archbishop nods to Byleth’s unasked question.

These sarcophagus are not empty. Each of them contains one or more of her children… how many were there, in total? 

No. No matter how much she wants to remember, she cannot risk it. Suffice to say there were more than the relics of the ten elites and sacred weapons can account for; more than fourteen. There are only ten sarcophagi in this room. Two more in an off-site mausoleum supposedly belonging to Cichol and Cethleanne. That’s only twelve, but the sense of presence in this room is larger than that. Nineteen, at least. Maybe thirty. But for all Byleth knows, there could be a hundred. Bone dust and hearts require less storage room than full bodies. 

Swallowing back bile and outrage, Byleth takes a deep, shaky breath and walks more sedately down the long aisle between her sleeping children. She tries desperately not to think of how lonely they must be, or to remember the one that’s been with her for months, strapped to Sylvain’s back. She still cannot face that one, though she’ll need to sooner than later.

By their footsteps, Byleth knows the group is following along behind her. Thanks to long hours of training and battlefield experience, she can tell without looking that they’ve spread into a defensive ring; heaviest fighters on the outside, with their mages and archers in the middle. Claude and Rhea are the only two outsiders, here, and they each flank Byleth directly.

To her surprise, no one asks what’s going on. Perhaps it’s the dense mood of the room, or just their desire to get this over with. Either way, the group makes the long walk up to the dias in relative peace before Rhea breaks the silence. 

“This is where the Goddess Sothis once held her court, a very long time ago. Now, it is where she and her children were laid to rest.” As they stop before the throne, Rhea gestures to it. “Heros that have come before you would sit upon the Goddess’ throne to hear her voice, and be gifted a vision showing them the direction she would have them take in life.”

“That’s it? I just need to sit on it?”

“Yes. The Goddess has already bestowed her blessing upon you. This throne— _ her  _ throne—should bridge the connection between you, calling her to give you guidance.”

“ _ This _ is the Goddess’ throne, huh?” Claude asks, managing to sound skeptical and impressed in the same breath. “Sure is fancy enough.”

“I’ve never even heard of such a thing,” Dimitri agrees, his brows drawn tight with concern.

“There was a time everyone in Fodlan knew this place,” Rhea explains, “But a decision was made a long time ago to seal the chamber except for the most holy rituals. Things such as this do not happen often, these days.”

“But why?” asks Mercedes, whose eyes shine slightly in the strange, source-less light. “Surely something this beautiful shouldn’t be hidden away.”

Suddenly seeming aware that her words could be considered disrespectful of the church, Mercedes puts her hand over her mouth. 

Rhea’s smile is kind, though her eyes glint with steel as she explains, “I would that everyone saw this place the same way you do. As I recall, the Holy Tomb was sealed after a group of heretics attempted to rob it some years back, much the same as the group you stopped several months ago. Unlike that incident, the first group caused a fair amount of structural damage. It was fixed, of course, but my predecessor was concerned about a potential collapse, should there be a repeat incident. I have found no reason to disagree with that conclucion.”

“If the entire mountain is riddled with caverns such as this, a single collapse could be disastrous,” Dimitri agreed, inspecting a nearby column with a new degree of respect.

“But there’s not actually any danger of that right?” Bernadetta asks, scooting closer to Ashe. The other archer gives her a worried look, but knows better than to attempt any kind of conciliatory touch. 

“No, Bernadetta,” Rhea assures her. “There is no danger here.”

Her gaze turns once more to Byleth, expectations in her eyes. “Tell me, Professor, it seemed as though your recognized this throne when you first saw it…?”

Byleth nods once, and Rhea’s eyes light up.

“I knew it. Please, go ahead. I have no doubt you will be given a revelation from the Goddess.”

If only the Goddess had any idea what to say.

Byleth casts another look around the group, before turning her attention on the throne itself. The desire to touch it is still in her fingertips, yearning like a long lost lover. She wants to  _ know  _ this place is real; to have it’s solidity reassure the parts of her still reeling from all the changes these past few days have wrought.

With a deep breath, Byleth mounts the last few steps to the throne. Her fingers slide over the smooth, solid stone. Though the first touch is icy, the stonework warms rapidly beneath her fingers, as though it were a living object just waiting to be touched. Carefully, Byleth turns and settles upon the seat.

There’s none of the sense of completion as from the Sword of the Creator. Given the situation with that particular object, Byleth is glad for that. There is, however, a pang of familiarity that passes between them. 

That is all, however. She gains no revelations, nor advice on how to end this the way that Rhea wants.

Her students crowd around the steps, watching with expressions ranging from anxious to bemused, irritated to hopeful. At the forefront, Dimitri and Claude simply look perplexed.

Eventually, Rhea’s brows draw together in a distressed frown.

“I… don’t understand. It worked before and you… you are so much closer than she was,” Rhea says, voice soft with disappointment. Her shoulders slump and she wilts, looking lost and small and vulnerable; not the unquestionable leader of the Church; not a terrified and traumatized mother. Just  _ Seiros _ , who wanted—who  _ needed _ —something to happen here.

Scrambling for something, anything, that might make that better, Byleth screws her eyes shut and  _ thinks _ .

And it’s there, in that darkness, that it comes to her. Perhaps this won’t be the grand gesture Rhea wanted, but it was enough to convince Seteth. It should be enough to convince Dimitri and Claude, as well. 

“Seiros,” Byleth says as she reopens her moon-lit eyes, barely hearing the gasp from the others as the otherworldly light illuminates their faces. 

A sudden clattering of armored boots upon the stairs echoes from behind them. The light in her eyes gutters as Byleth looks up to find soldiers in far-too-familiar armor pouring through the room’s only exit.

“What is the meaning of this,” Rhea snarls as Dimitri and Claude each push their way to the back of the group, the better to see the soldiers blocking their path.

Byleth stands as two figures appear from the dark stairwell, one unfamiliar and the other—

“You!” Dimitri gasps.

The Flame Emperor turns their gaze upon Dimitri, but their reaction remains unreadable. Their white and red mask blocks all hint of expression; their bulky armor any clue of posture. It’s the unfamiliar man, with harrowed eyes and a sleazy smile, who steps forward. 

Bernadetta whines faintly, gripping her bow with white-knuckled fingers. “That’s General Metodey! What’s he doing here?”

“No one moves,” barks the General, “Otherwise, we shall be forced to cut you down where you stand. The Imperial Army thanks you—”

“Hush, you fool,” hisses the Flame Emperor. The man pales, realizing what he’s just let slip. 

Claude scoffs. “The Empire, huh? This day just keeps getting better. Didn’t expect the graverobbing ploy, though.”

“The Imperial Army with the Fire Emperor,” Felix mutters sarcastically, “Who would have figured they’re working together?”

“How did they even get in here,” asks Ingrid. “The rest of the monastery—”

“I’ve long suspected you were the same person I remember, but I never imagined you would have the nerve to show your face here,” Dimitri says; the comment cutting through everyone’s chatter like a scalpel. Several confused looks are cast his direction, but Dimitri remains oblivious. His gaze is locked upon the Flame Emperor. “After everything you’ve done, now  _ this _ ? What could you possibly be after?”

“Is it not obvious? Look around you! Ask yourself why this place is so well hidden; what it is they could have buried here. There is power all around you. Power enough to rule all of Fodlan.”

“And—what? To obtain that power you will trample anything—any _ one _ —who stands in your way?” Dimitri demands. His voice lowers to a snarl. “Like you did in Duscar?”

Behind him, Dedue’s knuckles go pale upon his axe handle. 

For a brief moment, the Fire Emperor seems taken aback. Then they snap, “You have no idea what you are talking about. I had nothing to do with that. Now stand aside, Dimitri. I do not have time to debate you, but neither do I want your blood on my hands. I give you my word that no one will be harmed so long as you do not interfere.”

Before anyone can say anything more, the Flame Emperor turns to their assembled soldiers, “Retrieve the stones from the caskets. If anyone moves to stop you, cut them down.”

The soldiers salute, and rush forward. A hard knot rises in Byleth’s throat, threatening to cut off her air as she watches them come for her children.  _ Her children _ . 

She takes a step forward, only to be caught by Rhea’s grasping fingers. 

Embers burn in Rhea’s eyes; a hot, sizzling rage she is barely containing. But she must, here. She  _ cannot  _ unleash her fury in this cavern without either endangering everyone living above it or burying them all alive.

Rhea’s command is the grinding of bones into dust, the unheard screams of paralazyed victims. “Do  _ not  _ allow them to leave here with a single crest stone.” 

Byleth hadn’t been planning on it. A grating noise fills the air, and she pivots toward it, already knowing what she will see: a man at the furthest of the sarcophagi, his arm plunged into its shadowy depths. 

The Sword of the Creator feels right in her hands;  _ righteous _ . It bathes the stone around her in a ruby glow as she jerks free of Rhea’s grasp. The Archbishop’s fingernails leave hot scratches down her arm, but she barely notices. She’s already charging the front line, the blades of her sword extending like a whip. 

The soldier’s blood sprays across the jade; an offering to his leader’s greed.

Behind her, Dimitri barks commands. “Stay in formation, everyone! Follow the professor, but do what you must to keep them away from the caskets!”

Byleth has no time to consider their plan of action, or even rejoining the group. Another soldier has reached the opposite side of the room. They’ve knocked the sarcophagus lid from its place. Again, Byleth is moving, crossing the distance with the blades swinging ahead of her.

His hands go flying free of his wrists, dropping with the crest stone back into sarcophagus. Screams echo off the walls and ceiling. The choir of pain growing with each soldier who falls with scorched faces and arrows protruding like terrible flowers from their throats and eyes and hearts. 

Byleth turns from the gruesome scene, assured that her students will not allow the nabateans to be stolen, and finds the Fire Emperor’s gaze on the landing above. 

“This is  _ your _ final chance to back down,” she says, her voice low but carrying unnaturally to every ear in the room. “Any man who renounces this foolishness will be given their lives as a mercy.”

“Byleth--,” Rhea snaps in warning.

“Do not make promises you cannot keep, Professor,” the Fire Emperor replies, as calmly as though half their force isn’t already dead or dying. “Do you honestly believe that monster will make such a deal?”

“There aren’t any monsters in this room. Not yet.” 

“I wish that were true.” The Fire Emperor makes a gesture and two more soldiers rush from the dark stairwell above. They launch themselves over the half-story railing, landing nimbly upon the stone below. Then, before Byleth can react, they each take a device from their uniforms.

It looks something like message tube with a long needle fixed in one end and some sort of dark substance inside. Byleth has only a brief moment to register the familiar pull of it before each soldier shoves the needle into their neck and injects the substance into their body. 

They gag; heave; convulse. Their bodies turn grey as they grasp at their necks, stretching forward while their bones pop and weave beneath their flesh. Their uniforms stretch and break, falling away as their skin darkens and scales appear to cover their growing forms. 

Byleth takes a step back as Claude and Dimitri flank her, each gaping in horror at the monstrosities before them. 

“Attack,” says the Flame Emperor. The beasts roar and lunge for the trio. Neither targets Byleth, but the boys each dive to a side before those disastrous maws close around them.

“I don’t know how you guys handle these things normally, but I need some help up here,” Claude calls back to the heavier fighters still at the flanks. None of them have moved without Dimitri’s go ahead.

“No,” snaps Byleth. “We can’t hurt them.”

“Professor,” Dimitri asks, doding the first strike of demonic, razor-edged teeth. He sounds distant, lost somewhere beneath the ringing in Byleth’s ears. “I don’t know what you want us to do, but we need to get past them.”

She shakes her head, trying to find some other way to deal with this. There has to be another way. Minutes ago they were just soldiers, but now… now they’re  _ hers _ . They’re not supposed to be hers but this—this is—what have they—

The last pair she’d been able to kill without hacking away at their flesh. Without mutilating them using the bones of their own kin. Without bathing her children in the blood of their own cousins.

But doing so had taken power she’d been hard pressed to recover. Byleth thinks she has enough power now—the energy to burn her blood from their flesh, and send them peacefully to sleep. However, it would be  _ all _ her power. Using it will end her usefulness for the time being, and she cannot afford to sleep.

But there is something else that she can try.

The creature on the right rears its head back, aiming a strike at Claude. He draws his bow, clearly bent on attacking even if no one else will. Of course he is; he doesn’t know what happened in the forest.

“Stop,” Byleth says, looking at demonic beast focusing upon him.

“But,” he says, only to yelp as the teeth snap closed an inch from his leg. 

“STOP,” Byleth yells. The creature snarls and turns to look at her. It’s partner does the same, each beast growling so low and deep the sound vibrates the tiles beneath their feet.

Her eyes flash as she regards them, holding one hand out in a parody of the scene from the Sealed Forest. She doesn’t dare drop her sword this time but the single hand is enough. 

Between them, the blood sings. Hers and theirs, understanding one another. That does not mean they will heed her, however. Unlike the previous pair, these two have not had time to be abused or mishandled. Given what she just witnessed, it’s clear they may have even volunteered for transformation. But  _ why _ ?

Tension swells within the room; no one from either side seems to dare move as the creatures snarl and whine in confusion. Though it only takes a few seconds, it feels like forever before they come to a conclusion.

One beast takes a step toward Byleth. That’s all the excuse the other needs to rears its head back. It hisses, and lunges for its compatriot’s throat.

What follows is carnage and madness. The demonic beasts tangle together in a flurry of claws and teeth. Their corrupted, blackened blood oozes like oil across the floor as they roll together. The noise is deafening, nearly masking Rhea’s horrified scream as a tail, thick and solid as a tree, smashes into one of the sarcophagi, cracking the base and sending the lid toppling to the floor. 

“I’m sorry,” Byleth mutters softly, then looks back to her students. “Up the stairs! Now!”

To their credit, no one questions the order or hesitates. As the fighting beasts roll to the left side of the chamber, they flee for the right staircase, overwhelming the soldiers left gaping upon the stairs. 

The Flame Emperor realizes what’s happening in time to rally the last of their forces. They bark and order and Metoday, along with three of the last soldiers, rush forward to form a blockade wall between the FLame Emperor and the students. 

But not before Claude gets off one well placed shot.

His arrow soars through the room, true as a hawke after it’s dinner. 

Just as one of the beasts dies with a final, gurgling howl, the arrow finds its mark—deflecting directly off the Flame Emperor’s mask.

The shattering of porcelain fills the space the fighting beasts had occupied. Byleth isn’t sure which of them won; it hardly seems to matter as the Flame Emperor’s mask falls upon the floor, revealing the terribly familiar face behind it.

Edelgard sighs as she meets Byleth’s gaze without any barrier between them. “You are the one person I did not wish to make an enemy of…”

“Edelgard? What is this?” Claude mutters. He doesn’t sound surprised, only resigned. Byleth wishes she could say the same.

Her mind rushes back to a conversation held months before, the night of the ball. Edelgard, annoyed at Byleth’s insistence the Fire Emperor was responsible for what their allies had done, and the regret and sorrow in her eyes toward eyes when she realized Byleth would have allied with the Fire Emperor if… if Edelgard had been willing to see past her own conclusion.

Byleth swallows, tamping down the remaining outrage over the attack against the Nabateans. Did Edelgard even know what she’d been ordering? She mentioned power, sure, but did she  _ understand _ where that power came from? What it  _ meant _ for Byleth, or for Rhea? 

“Edelgard,” Byleth says, struggling to find the words to make sense of this awful scene. 

Then Dimitri begins to laugh. 

#

“Is this some kind of twisted joke?!” The prince’s voice echoes off the walls, his anger reverberating a thousand fold. He takes a step forward. “I’ve been looking for the man in that mask all this time. And it was  _ you _ ?  _ You?! _ ”

Byleth grabs for his arm as he moves past her, intending to pull him back behind her where it’s safe, but Dimitri shoves her backward with more strength than she knew he possessed. Claude catches her as she stumbles.

“I will take that head from your shoulders and hang it from the gates of Enbarr!”

With a final, outraged howl, Dimitri charges. The others, even Dedue, are too stunned to do more than stare as he breaks through Metoday’s line with a single, bone-snapping crack of his lance. Dimitri vaults over the fallen bodies, rushing the last line of enemy soldiers as, across the way, Edelgard hefts her axe and braces for his impact.

They meet in a clash of steel, each lightning fast in their movements. They’re perfectly matched normally, but not today. Is Edelgard is holding back, or is she terrified of Dimitri’s impossible, unrelenting rage, the likes of which Byleth has never seen from him. Where did this come from? Why?

But she knows, doesn’t she? The accusation is clear: Dimitri believes the Flame Emperor was responsible for Duscar. That  _ Edelgard _ was responsible.

“That’s not possible,” Claude says, as though he can read Byleth’s thoughts. “Edelgard was only twelve. She couldn’t have been at Duscar.”

He’s right. It isn’t possible. 

And yet, Dimitri isn’t the sort to come unhinged without cause. He’d never seen the Flame Emperor before, now that she thought of it. Every time they’d made an appearance, he’d been absent. He’d only heard of the person in the white and red mask, and every time they’d been brought up he’d gone quiet and thoughtful. 

He’d been comparing it to a mask he’d seen worn in Duscar. 

Why hadn’t he said anything?

“Dimitri stop!” The words are out of her mouth before she has a chance to consider what she’s doing. Byleth pulls free of Claude’s grasp and stumbles forward, extending her hand toward Dimitri… 

It’s there, as with the twisted children below, the sing of blood and bone. Dimitri is as much hers as they are, thanks to the crest written through his veins. It isn’t just him. She could speak with most of the people in this room, if she wanted. But Dimitri is the only person in her sights; the only one she cares about, in this moment.

He hesitates. Only for a moment. A split second. 

It’s enough. Edelgard’s axe swings around. The blade bites into Dimitri’s side.

Blood, hot and red, on the tile and a look of abject surprise.

Byleth doesn’t even hear herself scream.

The world goes sideways and warped; time itself clinging like syrup to her skin. It stretches and bubbles and pops, and once again Dimitri is charging forward without her. When she stumbles backward into Claude’s arms, she stays there, dizzy and spent. 

“Dimitri, stop,” Edelgard growls in an uneasy parody of Byleth’s own command. He doesn’t. “I had nothing to do with Duscar. But I will end this now, if I must.”

“Are you such a beast you won’t even admit to own wrongdoing? Your own  _ mother _ , Edelgard. How could you stoop so low?”

“If you would only listen—” The girl swears as her boot catches on the body of a dead soldier. She cries out in pain as the blunt end of Dimitri’s spear slams across her face. She reels, falls backward. Her axe bounces from her hands and skids away across the tile. 

Byleth thinks this is the end; prepares herself for the blood… and then Dimitri stops. With the tip of his spear he forces Edelgard to look up at him.

“Admit it,” he snarls, panting heavily as a wild beast. “Tell me why. Tell me  _ why _ you would cause such a tragedy, and I will make this quick.”

“I have  _ already  _ told you. Duscar was not my doing.”

“Liar!”

“Dimitri,” Byleth says again. She pulls herself from Claude’s grasp and stumbles their way. It took too much energy, yanking them all back through time. She hadn’t been careful enough. “Dimitri, you need to stop.”

“She killed them all!”

“She was only  _ twelve _ .”

“That is no excuse.”

“No. That’s not what I’m saying. Edelgard was only  _ twelve _ , and no where near Duscar. How could she have possibly been there?”

Dimitri doesn’t tear his gaze from Edelgard’s, but his brow knots in confusion. He huffs, and his fists shake, but he’s thinking about it. That’s good. That may just be enough.

Hands raised in a placating gesture, Byleth inches toward them. “We don’t have to let her go, but don’t kill her. Please. We need to make sense of all this—”

A shadow shifts just behind Dimitri, and Byleth’s eyes go wide. A gargantuan head pokes out from behind a nearby pillar, dinner-plate-sized eyes wide and slit-pupiled as they focus on the boy with his back to them. 

The other demonic beast; is it the one who listened to her, or the one who didn’t? Byleth isn’t sure. She extends her hand to it just as Dedue yells, “Your highness!”

Dimitri turns, and in that instant a hazy purple shape flickers into existence beside Edelgard.

“Hubert,” she gasps. 

“No!” Dimitri whips around and slamming his lance into the tile where Edelgard had been only a second before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. So that was a trip. I apologize for how long it took to get this chapter out; not only is it long but, uh, I've had some life upsets that might slow my progress some on the fic. I don't want to say much about it here, but if you'd like better updates on BS and maybe some mild cursing about writing process stuff, check out my tumblr (azureliongoddess).
> 
> We're well and truly heating things up now, though. I think you all know what's about to happen; I'm both dreading it and cannot wait for what happens next. 
> 
> Also, yes, I fudged the dates around a bit. Expect more of that going forward.


	3. The Daughter of Sothis

**Day 24 Lone Moon, Year 1180 **

The demonic beast lurks behind Dimitri, disoriented and unsure. Black blood leaks from a multitude of bites and scratches along it’s scaled, warped body. The creature keens mournfully, lowering its head once more to the tile floor the better to peer at Byleth as she stumbles over corpses to reach the Prince.

His face is a rictus of fury; his cheeks are splotchy with colour and stained in other people’s blood; his messy hair obscures his eyes. He yanks his lance from the cracked tile as Byleth reaches him. 

“I could have had her,” he growls. He flinches away from Byleth’s touch, whirling as he shouts, “I could have had her! They could have had their vengeance!”

“ _ Who _ ?” Byleth gestures toward the bodies. “The soldiers who just died for her? The people whose bodies she’s been corrupting with my blood?”

“My father.  _ Our _ mother. Glenn, Danica, Lazlo. The ministers and the knights, and all the innocents of Duscar. It was her fault! All this time. All these years hoping she was okay, wanting her to be happy, and it was  _ her  _ all along!”

He’s not listening. The wild look in his eyes; the panting breath. Byleth has seen this sort of breakdown before in people who thought they could handle the mercenary life. Sometimes even among the hardened mercenaries who’d lost too many people. Once they got like this, it would take time to calm them down again. Time they might not have right now… but she has to try.

Byleth takes a deep breath. “Dimitri, why do you believe Edelgard was responsible for Duscar?”

“Weren’t you listening? The Flame Emperor. I  _ saw her _ . I saw her there during the attack.” He gestures wildly with his spear, narrowly missing Claude as he approaches. The other Lord takes a step back, hands upraised.

“I knew this would happen,” Felix mutters somewhere behind them.

“He can’t be—that can’t be right,” says Ingrid; she seems more perplexed than anything else. “Edelgard couldn’t have been there, not even as the Flame Emperor… Right?”

In the heat of the moment, she hadn’t believed it possible herself. Now that they’ve had a moment to breathe, Byleth isn’t so sure. Technically,  _ she  _ had been on battlefields at the same age. It wasn’t unheard of. Hell, it was normalized among some mercenary units, and noble squires often began as battlefield runners as young as eight. Still, with the timing and the distance, and Edelgard’s social status it was a long stretch. Particularly when there was a simpler solution at hand. 

Edelgard’s armor. Though Dimitri had never seen the Flame Emperor before this moment, he’d addressed them like he’d known them the moment they walked in. When she’d told him about the appearance, he’d seemed thoughtful. As though remembering something.

Even then, he hadn’t seemed to lose control until Edelgard was demasked. 

But that made sense, too, did it not? It was one thing to face an old enemy you’ve long since anticipated killing. It’s quite another to realize that enemy is someone you love. That they’re another person you’re going to lose. That they betrayed everything you ever thought you knew about them.

“The armor,” she says, keeping her gaze locked upon Dimitri. “You saw the  _ armor _ in Duscar. Is that right?”

“Yes,” he hisses. “As I have said—” He cuts himself off, frowning again as, once more, the rage seems to slacken into confusion. “The armor?”

Claude sucks his teeth. “That does seem a more likely conclusion. But I have to wonder—” A distant rumble, somewhat like thunder, sends a drizzle of dust and stone raining from above. “What was that?”

“I am afraid the matter is not quite settled as yet,” says Rhea. Her skirts are in hand, lifted to let her run up the stairs behind them. There is steel in her eyes as she faces the two royals and Byleth. “Thank you, all of you, for your help. I had hoped to prevent this very scene, but it seems we were too late.”

Claude’s smile is devoid of humor or kindness. “You’re welcome and all, but I’m pretty curious how trying to convince us that Teach is in touch with the Goddess herself would have prevented Edelgard from robbing you blind.” Though phrased like a statement, it’s clearly a question; one with all the weight of the Alliance behind it. 

It’s equally clear, at least to Byleth, that Claude already knows the answer. He just wants Rhea to admit that she was hoping to put the fear of the Goddess into the three soon-to-be leaders of their respective countries. But no matter how much part of Byleth is annoyed at being used in such a manner, she has to admit it was a good gamble. It might have even worked had Edelgard played along. 

Another distant rumble rattles through the chamber. 

“That is a longer explanation than we have time for at present,” says Rhea. “If we survive this, the three of us need will need to have a talk.”

“What is ‘this,’ exactly?” Byelth asks, shielding her eyes from another rain of debris from the roof. Rhea had mentioned the place was unstable. How unstable, exactly?

“There were reports of ‘abnormalities’ among the pilgrims come for the festival,” Rhea admits, eyes tight with worry. There’s something else there, too, at the edge of Byleth’s perception. An energy rolling off the woman so similar to Dimitri’s it sends a renewed spike of terror through Byleth.

She’d guessed that Rhea was on the edge. Just how far was the woman gone? How fragile was her psyche at this moment?

Though his voice is light, and his gaze is still focused on Dimitri’s quiet, brooding form, Claude asks casually as can be, “Care to elaborate on that, maybe?”

“An overabundance of unattached adults. We tend to attract more families on festival days. A few citizens also expressed concerns that the people they were seeing had a fair amount of armor and weaponry among their things. More than could be accounted for by travel concerns. We sent Shamir to investigate.”

“That,” Claude starts, pauses, and then finishes with a rush of breath, “That changes things a bit.”

Much as Byleth would like to argue, he has a point. 

“Seteth was meant to report to me if anything happened. That he has not shown himself is worrisome.”

“Right.” Byleth closes her eyes as the ceiling shifts once more. 

The Empire Soldiers had gotten in somehow, but there hadn’t been enough time elapsed for a full assault to break through the monastery’s defenses. It was more likely Edelgard had let a small group in through some back door, or over a wall somewhere while the main force gathered at the gates. That didn’t explain the quakes. Not unless they had more demonic beasts on the leash. Which seemed all too likely.

“Everyone upstairs. This is clearly an attack. From this moment on assume we are in enemy territory unless I tell you otherwise. Anyone in an Empire uniform—soldier, or student—must be treated with suspicion until proven an ally.”

The last part widens eyes among her students, though Claude and Rhea nod approvingly. At the back, from behind pressed fingers, Mercedes asks, “But if… what about our friends…?”

“Arrest them if you can,” Byleth says. She swallows thickly against the next statement, not wanting to say it and not feeling like she has any other choice. This is a battlezone, now. It must be treated as such. “But if you have any questions about their loyalty, put them down.”

“Edelgard’s head is mine,” Dimitri says, without moving toward the formation the others are already settling into. He meets Byleth’s eyes for the first time since his charge and it’s all she can do not to flinch away from the dark, malevolent bloodlust held within.

She wants to argue, but another grumble from above reminds her that she can’t. Not right now. Not in this context. Because while his reasoning may be broken, his conclusion is right. If they meet Edelgard on the battlefield again this day, the girl will die.

“Understood.” 

#

Returning to the cathedral is a trial of its own, one fraught with a mountain of stairs that strained Byleth’s already flagging energy and the discomfort of her companions with the creature that trailed uncertainty behind them. Rhea had given her a strange look when the creature came to her simple whistle, but by mutual, silent agreement she hadn’t asked and Byleth hadn’t offered an explanation. Not yet. Explanations would come later, provided they lived through the day.

They burst into the cathedral proper to a shower of rubble and screaming. A segment of the ceiling gave way beneath a long, jagged beak. A shrill demonic cry burst from the monster’s beak, it’s mighty wings beating at the cathedral roof. 

“Byleth?” Rhea gasps, looking to her as she extends a hand.

Byleth can feel the blood but—but—a warning dizziness tugs at the back of her eyes. She stumbles and shakes her head. “I can’t.”

It was too much. She was already too far gone. The only reserves she has left are the ones holding back the wall of herself, keeping her sanity in check. If those break… 

The monstrous bird worms its way through the ceiling, and another is beating upon the roof to the other end. On the floor, nuns and monks and common citizens quake, pooling at the edges of the room as a few brave souls attempt to dig the fallen from the rubble before the monsters are upon them. 

“If they’ve unleashed these here, there will be more at the gates,” snaps Felix from behind. “We need to move.”

Leonie scowls at him. “We can’t just leave these people!”

“Perhaps if we lure them across the bridge the people will be able to escape after us,” suggests Dedue. 

“It’s worth a try,” Byleth agrees before any further in-fighting ensues. She looks behind them, at the single creature obeying her call. Now that it knows her, it seems intent on coming along. But it won’t be able to trail after them forever, and not only because the people on their side were likely to attack it. The trail of black blood staining the stairs behind it shows little stopping. 

“Go. I’ll bring up the rear.”

“But—”

Byleth meets each of their eyes before finding Dimitri’s. His are still bright with rage… but it’s controlled. More than it was before, anyway. Enough that she hopes she can count on him for what’s about to happen. 

Unfortunately, she doesn’t see much choice in the matter. Rhea is technically in charge of the monastery, but her students are  _ her  _ unit. Dimitri was Byleth’s second-in-command, despite their social status outside the monastery. If she was going to do this, she would have to be last out the door and she would have to stay and see it done. That meant he had to take over. There wasn’t a third to take his place.

Her gaze flicks to Claude—but no. Claude is with the Golden Deer. Already, he’s glancing toward the far doors, his feet nervous with the need to bolt. He wants to get to his people. She can’t ask him to neglect his duties for hers.

“Dimitri,” Byleth says, meeting his gaze steadily. “Protect Rhea and find Seteth. Get a read on the situation and prepare to help him however he needs. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

“Professor—”

“You can handle this. Go.”

Rhea touches her shoulder briefly. She nods at Byleth, then runs for the far doors. To the woman’s credit, the Archbishop is gathering every person she can on the way, letting them know to hold by the door and wait while they lure the monsters away. 

The rest of the group follows, casting Byleth uncertain glances as they leave her behind with the demon at her back. Flayn is the last to go. Her pale eyes—pale as Byleth’s own—flick between the bird crawling in through the ceiling, and the creature behind them before settling on Byleth. Then, before Byleth can react, Flayn reaches out and grabs Byleth’s hand. 

Something passes between them; a warmth like sunlight in her veins, shoring up Byleth’s reserves and steadying her resolve. She almost misses Flayn’s whispered question.

“You will tell us the truth this time, won’t you? When this is done?”

Byleth doesn’t need to tell Flayn anything. That much is clear. The look in Flayn’s eyes, tired now and rimmed in purple as though the girl has not been sleeping well, is as old as time itself, and filled with the sort of understanding that nearly brings Byleth to her knees.

“I will,” she promises anyway. Flayn nods, and hurries to catch up with the others. 

With Flayn’s energy humming through her, Byleth extends her hand to the side, palm down and waiting until her patient, wounded child nuzzles its nose against her palm. She rubs the tender, flaking scales. 

“I have to ask more of you than I like. But I have no other way of helping you, or them. Will you do as I ask?” Another lie, technically. With Flayn’s gift she could reach them, speak with them, try to sway them to her cause. But that would be an expenditure of energy she might need, shortly. Besides that, what good is there in taming more of them? Even this sad creature, this child, would have had to be put down by the end of the battle. It cannot live this way. She cannot allow it to live this way. 

It also cannot answer; neither in words nor thought. But there is a feeling of accord between them, an agreement bound in the blood this creature already spilt on her behalf. It will bleed for her. It will die  _ for  _ her, not because of her. 

Hating everything about this, Byleth steps forward, drawing the Sword of the Creator, and charges for the monstrous bird that just freed itself from the roof. The floor trembles as her child follows to its death.

#

The first of the birds dies upon the cathedral floor, her child’s teeth in its neck and black, sour blood pooling upon the scoured and ruined stone. Still gathered against the walls, the people stare with bulging eyes as the reptilian demon climbs to trembling feet and heels at her whistled command. 

There had been a second bird that, as Dedue predicted, followed her students across the bridge. She hadn’t reached them quickly enough to stop it from giving chase. Byleth reaches the cathedral door to see that four of her students remain locked into a formation in the middle of the bridge: Sylvain, Annette, Felix and Leonie. The melee fighters form a triangle around their mage, who alternates healing magic with a barrage of fireballs at the beast attacking from above. 

Behind Byleth, her limping, dying child issues a challenging roar. The stork-like head of the flying beast whips around. Its challenge rips through the air like a tornado. 

“Go,” Byleth shouts at her students. Felix and Leonie frown at her, stubbornness clouding their features. It isn’t until she unleashes the creator sword, snapping it like a whip around the beast’s long neck that they heed the tug of Annette and Sylvian’s hands, pulling them away across the bridge. 

Byleth hands clamp around the hilt of her sword, keeping it steady as the beast bucks and writhes like a fish on the hook. It’s the hardest battle of her life, but she’ll be damned if she won’t win. 

Her child steps around her—too far gone to leap or bound or run. The blood leaking from its sides runs like waterfalls, making the stone slick and treacherous. But its steps remain sure as it advances upon its prey like a fat, tired cat. The hilt slips in her palms and Byleth grits her teeth. 

Though it seems to take forever, it must be only seconds before her beast reaches the bird. It latches mighty jaws around the bird’s leg, shaking it half heartedly before it lurches toward the side of the bridge. 

Byleth gives one final yank, her power fluxing briefly through the blade to release the parted sections and bring them home. Her eyes lock with the monster’s, her throat clogged with grief, as it tumbles willingly over the edge and down, down, down into the abyss. The monstrous bird cries out in pain and defiance as it’s pulled along.

Silence. A long, terrible silence. Then, far below, a stone-rattling thump and two cries of pain cut short. 

“Forgive me,” Byleth whispers to no one, takes a deep breath, and soldiers on.

#

By the time Byleth makes it to the front the fighting has stalled. It isn’t over. The Empire forces have retreated to the base of the mountain, amidst the smouldering ruins of the village they’ve already burned, to lick their wounds and gather their forces for another attack.

An attack the Monastery won’t survive. Everyone knows this, even if no one says it.

Upon appearance, Byleth is directed up the abbey stairs to the topmost floor—a place she’s only been once before—where a small assembly is waiting on the balcony. As soon as she arrives, Seteth, arm bandaged but still bleeding, fills her in on what happened. 

The assault happened more quickly than should have been possible. As Seteth suspected, a small army had been hidden among the pilgrims crowding the village at the monastery’s base. They’d charged the gates as a distraction while Edelgard killed the few Knights stationed at the walls near the crumbling chapel were Jeralt gave his life. It was like salt rubbed into a wound. 

So small a force wouldn’t have been enough to topple the monastery. He thought he could handle it. But then, roughly around the time Edelgard revealed herself in the tomb, reinforcements spilled from the Sealed Forest. Unlike the peasant-garbed rabble from the first charge, these were outfitted soldiers in the Empire’s colours. They brought with them catapults and a battalion of demonic beasts of all shapes and sizes. 

No one was sure how they’d gotten so close undetected, and Shamir never reappeared.

Standing on the moon terrace, gaze locked grimly upon the burning remains of the monastery’s frontmost buildings, Byleth listens with growing certainty that their home is lost. 

Home. The word is strange and uncomfortable, even in her head. This is not  _ her _ home. Her home, if she has one, was destroyed centuries ago. But it’s Rhea’s home. It’s Seteth’s and Flayn’s home. It is the home of many innocent people who have nothing to do with Edelgard’s war. 

And a lot of them will die today.

“We must  _ leave _ , Rhea” Seteth warns. “We’ve managed to buy time, but the gates won’t last another assault.”

“I  _ will not _ allow them to take this place,” Rhea snarls, and for a moment Byleth is distracted by how obviously inhuman she is, even in this form. Standing perfectly, alarmingly still against the backdrop of blood-drenched sky, Rhea’s eyes glitter like a snake’s. She barely seems to be breathing. But none of the gathered seem to think anything of it. Or, if they are, they keep their mouths shut.

Most of the knights and students remained downstairs, either tending the frightened non-combatants in the main hall, or holding the gates while leadership withdrew for a strategy meeting. Only a handful of knights, Claud, and Dimitri are present. From the way Dimitri’s gaze lingers on the distant gates, Byleth wonders if he’s even paying attention. 

Catherine’s lips press tight and thin. “My Lady, all due respect, but we cannot afford to lose you. Please, let us move you to safety—”

“No,” Rhea snaps. Then, seeing the look on her Knight’s face, her jaw clicks and relaxes a degree. More softly, she says, “This place, these people, are  _ my  _ responsibility, Catherine. I thank you for your concern and your loyalty, but I will not run while they are in danger.”

“Then allow us to get them to safety, at least,” Seteth hisses. “We can still escape through the back passages. They haven’t found them yet.”

“Back passages?” asks Claude. 

“You were in one of them this morning,” Seteth says. “There are more. One is an escape route meant for this precise situation.” 

“Then it’s only a matter of time before they’re discovered,” says Byleth. “Edelgard should be well aware of the underground sections of the Monastery by now.”

“Yes.” Seteth’s agreement is weary and resigned. “That is precisely my point. We had no idea how treacherous the girl was, and she has had more than enough time to map the Monastery. We cannot hold it, Rhea. Not this time.”

“This time?” asks Catherine as Claude’s eyes sharpen in interest.

But Rhea scoffs harshly at her brother’s concern. She moves, motion fluid as a serpent, to brace her hands upon the balcony railing. Her gaze locks upon the gates. When she speaks, her voice is so low Byleth doubts any but she and Seteth can hear. “To think, I allowed her to fool me. I knew that our relationship was strained, but she is my… I assumed she would come to heel.”

Byleth exchanges a look with Seteth. There’s a lot to unpack in that statement, she feels, and not nearly enough time to do it. They need a plan. 

From the back, Dimitri says, “We’ll buy you time.”

“Dimitri,” Byleth begins, only to drift off as he meets her gaze. Anger sizzles there still, but also resignation. He’s come to some sort of peace with the situation, it seems. Or is that only the mask he was wearing all this time? Suddenly, Byleth isn’t sure.

“I won’t watch it happen again,” he says. “I can’t run away while these people are slaughtered. There are families and children, here. Whatever Edelgard’s reasoning for this madness, it cannot go unanswered.”

He pauses, seeming to chew on his next words. Finally, he admits, “But we don’t have the forces to stand against her, now. We  _ can  _ still buy you all time to get the non-combatants away. They can go to Fhirdiad. Faerghus will stand with the Church of Seiros.”

And if staying gives him another chance at Edelgard, he’d do it. Dimitri doesn’t need to add that part for Byleth to know, deep in her bones, the unspoken part of his offer. So far, the girl had not made another personal appearance. Much as that might make matters simpler, a part of Byleth is still glad for it.

Dimitri’s gaze slides toward Claude, followed by several others. The Alliance Lord-to-be smirks and shrugs.

“I can’t speak for the Alliance as yet, but I can promise that the Golden Deer won’t allow for a slaughter here. We’ll stand with the Blue Lions until the evacuation is complete.”

Seteth nods. “The Church of Seiros owes you all a debt—”

“No.” Everyone swivels to look at Rhea, whose back remains to them. Her fingers clench upon the stone.

“Rhea—”

“ _ No _ , Seteth. These children will not die for us. Not for me.” She takes a deep breath and faces the boys. “Dimitri, Claude; I thank you for your offer. The Church thanks you for your help. I would appreciate if you both follow Byleth in covering the retreat to the tunnels.”

Byleth frowns. “But if we’re covering the retreat, who will hold the gates?”

Catherine steps forward, clearly about to offer, when Rhea raises a hand to hold her back. Her gaze meets Seteth’s, then Byleth’s in turn. “ _ I _ will.”

Seteth startles. “Rhea—” 

“ _ No _ , brother. I must do this. I will defend my people, and no matter what happens,  _ you  _ will go with Byleth.” 

“And why should I do that?”

Rhea levels a stare at him that could melt straight through to the earth’s core. “You know why. And if that isn’t enough for you… Byleth. I am naming you my acting second. From this moment on, until we meet again,  _ you _ are the Archbishop of the Church of Seiros.”

“What?” asks Byleth.

“ _ What _ ?” asks Catherine as everyone gapes. Everyone except Seteth, whose resigned sigh strongly indicates he expected something like this. 

“You have your orders,” Rhea snaps. She clasps Catherine’s hand in hers for a brief moment. “Keep Byleth safe until I return. I am counting on you.”

Catherine’s eyes are bright and wet, and the look she casts Byleth is so hateful it’s akin to being slapped. That look is gone an instant later as Catherine’s shoulders stiffen with resolve. She bows to Rhea. “Yes, My Lady.”

Rhea nods in return, seeming satisfied as she returns to her post on the balcony. “Go. There won’t be much time left before they attack again.”

As though summoned with her words, a war horn blasts from somewhere outside the gates. A rattle of drum follows, announcing a march. The Empire is on the move.

One by one, each of the gathered turn toward the stairs. Dimitri and Claude are last to linger, each looking to Byleth in concern. 

“I’ll be along in a minute,” she says. 

The boys exchange a look before they leave her, one she can’t read. Any other time she would have wondered on that. Right now, there are bigger issues. One bigger issue. 

Alone with Rhea and Seteth, Byleth approaches the balcony at a side-step, her gaze locked upon the older woman. This isn’t the time, probably, but if Rhea is so bent on this course of action there is something she ought to know, first. Something that could possibly make Rhea change her mind, or only steel the woman’s resolve. At this point, Byleth doesn’t dare guess.

Her gaze darts briefly to Seteth, who is watching her in the same manner she’s been looking at Rhea; wariness and concern. Byleth swallows dryly. 

“Rhea,” she says, trying to judge the woman’s expression against the blinding sunset. It’s an impossible task. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Her reply is soft and ragged and spent. “Not now. Whatever it is can wait until this is over. But there is something you must promise me, Byleth.”

“What’s that?”

“Promise you will not try to save me.” 

With a dry chuckle the Archbishop faces her, and this is worse; now her face is cast in shadow, her outline glowing like fire against the sun. “I see that look. You’re stubborn. Like your mother. ...like me. But you cannot risk yourself for me. I will not thank you for that. Risk yourself for  _ them _ . Get our people free of this. Stay with Seteth and Flayn, they will guide you. Lead the people until I return, or until you have a successor of your own.”

“You’re so certain you’re going to—” Die. She can’t bring herself to say it. 

“I ran before. I will not run again.”

Rhea glances over her shoulder at the encroaching army; the field of smoke and death stretching before them. “Promise me.”

Byleth’s lips move, but no answer comes forward. She stands, mute and torn with indecision. How can she protest when, in Rhea’s place, she would probably make the same decision? And yet—the part of her that is still Sothis weeps. One more daughter she cannot save, not even from herself.

Rhea doesn’t wait for an answer. She nods once to Byleth, steps onto the railing, and into the open air. She drops like a creature of the earth, there and gone in an instant. 

From the empty sky beneath the balcony’s edge there comes a flash of blinding light, and then the beautiful, graceful serpentine form rises from below to a chorus of startled screaming. The Dragon of the Sky, the Immaculate One, the last of Sothis’ daughters unleashes her fury upon the coming night.

“Seteth—” Byleth chokes on her own words as his hand clasps around her shoulder.

“Rhea is correct, this time. We’ll discuss this later. For now, we must attend to our people.”

Swallowing her grief and heartache, Byleth nods and turns with him for the stairs.

#

The Monastery was gripped in semi-organized confusion. No one knew where the dragon had come from, but so long as it didn’t turn on their forces they were content to give it a wide berth. It raged over the heads of the incoming army, spouting lightning from its fanged maw and raking demons from the sky, providing ample distraction as the Monastery’s inhabitants began their retreat.

By the time Byleth made it to ground level, Dimitri and Claude had already divided their forces between them, assigning units of their fellow students to assist the knights in searching out people hiding in various buildings and guiding them toward the graveyard. Flayn had surprised no few people when she’d opened one of the retaining walls upon another dark column of stairs. Like Rhea, her mask is slipping in the face of another lost home and self-inflicted exhaustion. Byleth isn’t sure Flayn even cares.

Seteth takes his daughter by the shoulders. “We need you to lead them to safety.”

“But—”

“You know your way better than most, and can guide them around detours if necessary. I will bring up the rear, and shepherd the lost. Byleth— ”

“I will be with my students, making certain no one is left behind. We’ll meet you with the stragglers.”

“As you say.” He glances between both the girls, then adds, “If we  _ are  _ separated, we will meet again in Zanado. Er, that is, in—”

“I know where that is,” Byleth assures him. 

Seteth gives her a meaningful look, but only nods. “Good. We have our assignments, then.”

Flayn makes a soft, mournful sound in the back of her throat, but her expression remains resigned. Before she can take more than a few steps away, however, Byleth finds herself saying, “Wait.”

“What is the matter?”

Byleth scans the milling crowd, trying to find—there. “Ignatz! Raphael!”

The pair, freshly returned from escorting a group of children, trot towards them. “Yes, Professor?”

“I need you to go with Flayn. Escort her down the stairs, and make sure she stays safe. She’s your only guide right now.”

Raphael frowns, his thick brows knotting in consternation. No doubt he intends to protest, but a bone-shuddering crash from the gates changes his mind. 

“On it, Prof,” he agrees. 

The boys flank the smaller girl as she jogs for the stairs. A moment later her voice somehow cuts across the noise. “Everyone! You must follow me in an orderly fashion, please. We are going into a space that is very dark and steep. Please carry lights and watch your step.” 

Torches lit around the crowd as Church officials took first positions, a pair standing on either side of the door to correct anyone attempting to push their way through first. Seteth moves to join them, and Byleth, satisfied that there probably won’t be a panicked riot on the stairs, turns to find Dimitri, Claude, and Dedue waiting behind her. 

“We’re going to do a final sweep—” she starts, only to be interrupted by a keening, far too familiar cry.

A draconic cry. Not of fury or battle lust or triumph.  _ Pain _ . 

“Seiros,” she gasps and pushes through her boys as she bolts for the gates.

“Professor, wait!”

#

The great hall is empty, save for abandoned litters and bloody smears where the dead and dying had been laid following the initial assault. Byleth ignores all this as surely as she ignores the steps charging in her wake. Her gaze is focused beyond the open doors at the end of the hall, to the half-torched gates at the front of the Monastery. They shudder as she nears them, something thumping rhythmically upon the other side. 

A battering ram, she realizes, just as the doors burst open. Soldiers in Empire armor spill forth, and beyond them a great plain dotted by catapults, the dead, and a gargantuan dragon with a hole ripped through one great wing. 

“Now you die,” roars Dimitri. Dedue backs his assertion with a war cry ripped from the very depths of the underworld. This time, when they charge the enemy headlong, they do so as a unit. 

Arrows zip over their heads, but distantly Byleth realizes that Claude isn’t following them anymore. That’s fine. This is not his fight.

It should have been ludicrous; three half-grown children charging a line of trained soldiers. But the soldiers were the ones to stumble to a halt, confused and terrified of the force coming at them. Her sword is in her hands, burning like a brand in the gathering gloom. 

Somewhere behind her, as the blades rip through flesh and steel and bone, she hears her name being called. Catherine, she thinks, calling her back. But it’s too late. Her gaze is fixed upon her daughter, locked into a struggle with a whole pack of the reptilian demons and—and— 

Who  _ is  _ that?

Byleth yanks her sword free of a man’s gut and tries to decipher what is keeping Seiros in place. The dragon is swiping at something far smaller than herself. Something carrying a red-hot weapon kin to Byleth’s own.

Literally  _ kin _ .

Her blood chills as the flash of white-blonde hair across the battlefield confirms the sudden onslaught of fear.

Edelgard. Edelgard is keeping Seiros’ attention all by herself. Edelgard is wielding another of Byleth’s children; one she doesn’t recognize from such a distance. 

“She’s mine,” Dimitri screams. He starts in Edelgard’s direction only to have his path blocked by another unit of soldiers. Dedue is right behind him, but they are soon swallowed in the press. 

Across the field, Seiros leaps into the air as magic gathers around Edelgard’s outstretched hand. With her torn wing she cannot fly. She doesn’t need to. With Edelgard distracted by casting, Seiros twirls. Her long, thick tail cuts across the ground, a tidal wave of churned earth, soldiers and corpses kicked up in front of it. Edelgard’s magic dissipates with a snap as she leaps over the tail, only to be caught by a slap of Seiros’ meaty paw as the dragon comes back around. 

The girl is thrown backward, far across the field, and lands in a painful roll. 

White, strobing light flickers along Seiros’ scales. The air begins to compress with gathering ozone. 

The blast of lightning is far more than enough to kill Edelgard. Or it would have been, had it hit. 

A far too familiar displacement of air shunts the magic away at the last second, the blow sending a painful flash of light that blinds half the field before it dissipates. Behind it, the pale, white-eyed man whose interference allowed for Jeralt’s death, stands over Edelgard’s fallen body like a protector.

Another scream rips the air; this one her own, Byleth realizes belatedly. She’s focused on flinging aside soldier after soldier in her hurry to get between this man and her daughter. Her grandmother. Her Seiros. He will not take another person away from her. Not again. Not  _ again _ , dammit. 

Seiros bellows, the wordness cry seeming both a plea and a demand for Byleth to stay back, though she couldn’t say how she knew its meaning. And it doesn’t matter anyway. The man’s gaze has already turned toward Byleth, his self-confident smile breaking into a sharp-toothed grin. 

He makes an arcane motion, quick and concise. Power the kind of which she has never seen before gathers around him in a burst of violet light, building larger and larger. It’s the size of a small star by the time she’s within striking distance; sword raised as she gathers her power for a quick, killing blow.

He waves as he releases it.

The star streaks like a comet across the field, the noise of it’s passage breaking through the air louder than any cannon. And she isn’t prepared. She isn’t prepared at  _ all _ for the force that hits her, slamming her backward through the air just as Edelgard had been flung. 

The air rips from Byleth’s lungs. Her visions dances with painful lights.

Another, grating dragonic scream as Seiros lunges for her only to be weighed down by a pack of demons slamming into her from every side. Even if she could have flown, she never would have made it in time. 

Byleth hadn’t known the cliff was there. Hadn’t realized how close they were to the edge. She barely realizes it now, between the lack of oxygen and the Agarthan power sizzling through her flesh, even as she begins to fall.

But as the wind whistles around her, instinct takes over. The power she had been gathering for an attack transfers, becoming a way to save herself the only way she knows how. The only place she can go where the fall won’t kill this mortal vessel. 

It will have to be enough.

It will have to—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It, uh, it's been a hard month guys. Your comments have all been noted and deeply appreciated, and I will try to get to responses, soon. I'm psyched to get back into this story, and hopefully the next chapter won't take quite so long. Especially as we're now past this overwhelmingly huge battle scene. Obviously I've changed some things around (particularly the layout of the monastery which... doesn't make much sense IMHO. It looks vastly different between the cut scenes and the game assets, to me anyway.) but I wanted to keep pretty close to the original plummet. 
> 
> Also now we can really deep dive into the Dimileth stuff, and I'm so happy for that. I maaay be working on a slight detour/spin-off as well. We'll see.
> 
> This is a bit random, maybe, but would anyone be interested in my spotify playlist for this?


	4. From Past to Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth falls and rises anew, out of place and out of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm not sure if this is going to work correctly, but as at least one person asked for it, I'm going to link the current spotify playlist. This is updated fairly often! (Usually with each new chapter.) [Obsidian Night: A Filk Soundtrack](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6swcfkFfHrD6HLvjzllndJ)
> 
> I hope to get the next bit out around xmas or new years, but if not that, then January. If y'all don't hear from before then, I hope all of you have a great end of 2019!

**Day 21 Ethereal Moon, Year 1185 **

Light blazes around her, scorching the vision of a distant cliff; blue sky; trees. Air rushes past, roaring like a white-cap river. Her eyes widen as she remembers what lies below. Byleth twists in the air, body writhing in a feline manner as though she can land on her feet like a cat. It’s no use. Her back slams into the ice with a horrible crunch. There’s the briefest millisecond of pause before the ice gives way and cold engulfs her. Shockwaves tear through her nerves, freezing her for one horrible moment before instinct asserts itself. 

Her fingers flex, carving through the water with a wave of raw power that propels her forward like a shot. She breaks through the glittering surface with a force that shouldn’t be possible, but is somehow familiar and right. She drives the Sword of the Creator into the first solid ice sheet she reaches, using it as leverage to pull herself from the water. Her fingers score the thick ice as she scrabbles forward, until her knees and hands press firm against the chilly ground. She sputters and coughs, but she is  _ alive _ . 

More awareness returns as her breathing evens. Nearby birdsong draws her attention, quaint and unperturbed by the sudden addition to the area. A rustle of arctic wind. An animalistic snuffle and snapping of twigs from a nearby stand of trees; probably a foraging deer or pig. Nothing that ought to be worrisome. And it wouldn’t be, if any of it made sense. 

The snow and ice clinging to her wet, frigid skin are too real to be hallucinations. But when had it last snowed? She can’t remember, precisely, only that it wasn’t recent. She remembers the thaw coming early this year. That’s why the assault had made a sick sort of sense. Spring was always a good time to launch a war campaign.

Slowly, Byleth lifts her head to stare across what should be an open, fallow field near the township underscoring the Monastery. Pure, unfettered fear trembles across her skin at the sight of snow blanketing the plain, piled deep and undisturbed. Thin copses dot the area, the trunks coltish and underbellies littered with brambles. A good few years of growth, if she’s any judge, but no more. No less, either.

Still acting on base instinct, Byleth rises to her feet, takes a deep, energy-gathering breath, and releases a heat that sears the moisture from her clothes and hair. It’s only afterward that she realizes what she’s done. She looks down at her own hands, her own body, as though she’s never seen them before. 

At first glance she seems unchanged. She’s wearing the same leathers she’d had on when she entered the Holy Tomb. The Sword of the Creator juts from the ice where it was momentarily forgotten in her rush to get free of the river. 

Byleth prods at her breastplate, wondering that it’s still in tact after that strange blast of energy—but that had been a foreign power. It was difficult to say what the overall effects were supposed to be, other than pure force. Her breastplate isn’t even dented, much less scratched. 

Stranger still is the pale green hair spilling over her shoulders and down to her waist. She reaches up to gather a lock and freezes as her fingers brush her ear. Her breath catches. 

Slowly, carefully, she traces the rim of her ear as her mind reels. Where there ought to be a rounded edge, her flesh feels slender and pointed, and longer than any human’s.

She turns back to the river, bending over it in vain hope of seeing herself reflected there. No luck; the water is choppy and churning from her passage. Byleth takes a deep breath, swallowing her panic. She needs to think. Needs to piece this all together again.

What does she remember?

She was on the cliff. Seiros was in trouble. Byleth couldn’t just stand there and watch the woman die. Particularly not at the hands of the man who’d already killed her father. 

The mage’s blast hit Byleth. She fell.

There would be no saving this body from that sort of fall. Even if Rhea managed to survive that battle—and oh, Stars Above, where was Rhea?—Byleth would be once again trapped within her own solid heart. 

Except, there was  _ one _ way. 

Flayn had gifted Byleth enough energy that she could open a rift through reality into the darkness where Solon once attempted to trap her. That plane was malleable. Distances there were mere suggestions. So Byleth went in one side planning to come out again further down the cliffside; far enough that the fall wouldn’t kill her on impact.

And that was precisely what happened. Or, so it seems. 

Looking up, Byleth easily finds the cliff from which she’d fallen. The distance had been abbreviated by more than half, allowing her to fall into the water without breaking every bone in her body. And yet…

There are no sounds of battle from above. No draconic cries, nor howling monsters; no acrid tang of blood and ruined flesh. The sun shines merrily above her, where only moments before it had been sinking. All in all, she feels confident that there isn’t an army anywhere nearby. There hasn’t been an army here in a very long time.

She wants to fly up there. She wants to assume the form that once was hers. To be the creature she was meant to be, and rage as her daughter had all the way back to the home she’d failed to protect. Like the urge to pick at a wound, she wants to see the horrors that surely lie in wait for her. 

But even now, even with the incomprehensible changes wrought upon her flesh, that form is a distant dream. Whatever has happened, she has not fully reclaimed herself. That will take time, yet. It will also take time to reach the monastery in this form, and there may be answers closer at hand.

Swallowing thickly, Byleth backs away from the river, turns, and scans the sky behind her. If the roof-shaped mounds of snow are any indication, the houses of the township yet exist. That is a cold comfort. There are no trails of smoke from the chimneys, nor movement in the streets.

For one long, terrible moment Byleth is certain there’s no one nearby. Then, so distant it must be on the far side of town near the sealed forest, she finally spies a thin line of white rising above the trees.

#

The closer Byleth gets to the town the more her apprehension grows. No sounds of humanity come to her on the wind. No livestock bray in their pens. Nothing moves in the dark windows. This is a ghost town, empty and forgotten. 

Byleth tucks her hands between her arms and sides, huddling for warmth. Once again, she takes a breath and releases it in a wave of heat that temporarily stills the shivering of her body. A yawn rips from her throat a moment later and she reels as a wave of dizziness envelops her. 

Byleth blinks dazedly, waiting for the spell to pass. It does, begrudgingly. However nice that little trick is, it clearly isn’t sustainable. Not right now, when she already expended quite a lot of energy throwing herself through a rift, altering her body, and climbing out of a frozen river. More than she needs to understand what’s happened, she needs shelter, a fire, and proper winter gear. 

The first reasonably in-tact building she comes to is a farm-house on the outskirts of town. Its rotted front door stands open to the weather. Brown, leafless vines cling to the brick and chipping mortar, and moth-eaten curtains sway in the broken front windows. Her footsteps creak over the sagging porch.

As she looks through the three small rooms encompassing the first floor, Byleth swallows the urge to call out something stupid like “hello?” A small staircase leads upstairs, but the ice encrusted steps and open hole in the roof make her hesitant to test it.

Instead, she pauses just inside a dim and musty bedroom, glancing back across the shredded bed frame to a black-spotted, age-warped mirror clinging to the wall. She approaches slowly, drinking in the haunted gaze of yet another familiar, foreign face. 

Here she can see the new length of her hair in its entirety, grown to her waist in uneven waves. It frames her face, and the wide green eyes she’s grown used to these past few months. She looks more like Rhea than ever before. And like Flayn. The family resemblance once hinted at is now undeniable. 

But once again, it is her ears that draw her focus. Their tips peek out to either side, giving her away her less-than-human nature at a glance. They aren’t as long as they were when she was Sothis, but the tips poke out from beneath her hair in a way that will surely be a problem.

She scoops her hair behind one ear to examine the long, narrow length of the cartilage. It occurs to her, quite belatedly, that all three of her surviving family members must have been using their hairstyles to hide their own ears. Or did they pin them back?

Cichol’s face flashes in her mind; his younger self, eons ago, with shorter hair and short, pointed ears that angled closer to his head than hers ever did. Immediately Byleth frowns, not just for the memory—which feels correct—but it’s expediency. 

Bracing herself for the headache, she casts her memory back further. There is Seiros’ face as they sit upon a large formation within the red canyon, surveying the milling children below. There is Cethleann, barely a year old and clinging to Caduceus' serpentine neck. 

A small pressure forms behind Byleth’s eyes; the beginnings of a headache, but not the mind-eating migraine of before. The dam is gone. That must be where she got the power to alter her body. More importantly, the dam is no longer needed. She is no longer human enough for the eons to eat away at her mind, as they would a mortal. 

Her gaze refocuses upon the mirror and her own reflected face. 

Neither the energy Flayn gave her nor what she’d been using to hold the memories of herself at bay were enough to have done  _ all _ this. As she’d been, it should have taken years of hording her energy to alter herself so extensively. Something else had happened. But what? She fell, and ripped open the darkness…

And what if—

She swallows hard.

What if she  _ hadn’t  _ had the strength to get out again? What if the effort of trying had knocked her out inside the darkness. What if she had fallen asleep just as she had centuries before, following her presumed defeat of the Agarthans? 

She fell asleep, and her unconscious self broke the dam, using what energy remained to to transform her body into something more suitable. It made a sick sort of sense. The closer her blood edged toward draconic, the more energy her sleep would regenerate. All the power spent would return to her exponentially until—until  _ what _ ? Until she regained enough strength to rip reality open again? How long would that have taken?

“Hello?”

The girl in the mirror goes wretchedly still at the sound of a voice outside. 

A voice, and footsteps. She counts at least five people whose boots crunch through snow without regard for stealth or surroundings. From the weight of the steps, three are wearing heavy armor while two are lighter. One of the lighter persons has a slight limp. 

A second voice hisses loudly. “Will you stuff that? You want to get us ambushed?”

“Doesn’t look like anything’s here,” says another, loudly confirming that stealth is not a priority for most of them. 

“I know what I heard,” snaps the second. 

“Yeah. ‘Canons’. And where d’you think someone got canons from all the way out here? You know, well as I, no one’s resupplied the monastery in ages.” 

Two cracked and rotting shutters block the bedroom’s only window, helping obscure Byleth from immediate view even as shadows pass close enough to break the sunlight. She remains still, counting each shadow. The trail she left through the snow is just around the corner from the road. If they go a little further they’ll see it… 

“Not canon _ s _ —cano _ n _ . Just one. And maybe it wasn’t a canon. Maybe it was a wall going or something. That place is a wreck. We should go back and check. They might need our help.” 

“We’re supposed to report at the lines  _ tomorrow _ ,” a third, oddly familiar female voice cuts in. Byleth’s mind reels. Was that Leonie? “We’re already going to be late. Besides, if there’s a problem, they’ll light the signal fires, right?”

“No one asked for your opinion, sellsword.”

“No,” agrees another familiar voice which sends Byleth’s pulse skittering. If she wasn’t certain about the woman, this man she knows. Luca had been in the Company since she and her father joined. And it would make sense that Leonie was with him. Still… “But my compatriot is right. We were paid to run the route here and back, not go chasing after fever dreams.” 

Though she wants to run and greet them, Byleth’s own reflection roots her to the spot. Announcing herself would be foolish; not only because she can’t be sure she’s right without looking, but because she has to be careful who sees her like this. Luca and Leonie she would trust. But the others… 

Byleth inches cautiously to the window. There is a slight gap where one shutter lists on its hinges, just large enough to peer through if she closes one eye, but all she sees are flashes of Empire uniforms. She counts at least three, including the one who stops nearest to the window with the mark of a minor noble’s house embossed on his shoulder guard. 

“You’re being paid to do as your  _ told _ ,” spits the lordling.

She can practically hear Luca’s smirk as he replies, “You aren’t wrong about that. And the person who  _ is paying _ told us to escort you along this route within a specific time frame. So unless  _ you’re  _ planning to pay us the difference out-of-pocket when our we get docked for failing to meet our deadline…?”

The noble scoffs. “We wouldn’t be late if your lot stopped arguing.”

“Beg to differ. We’ve already wasted a good, oh, candlemark or more searching a ghost town for… what? Some random noise you boys heard? It’s winter, gents. Branches break. Trees fall. Doesn’t mean there’s a reason to be alarmed.”

“He’s got a point,” begins another soldier. “I guess it could’ve just been an iced over tree…”

“Are you having me on?” The noble rounds the man, stalking out of view. “We spent all this time looking around and you wanna say it’s a tree, now?”

“You know I don’t like this old place,” the man replies, his voice growing haunted and more nervous with every word. “You weren’t  _ here _ . You didn’t see—what I heard, it sounded just like it when that fuckoff-big demonic beastie—”

“Pull it together, soldier,” sneers the noble. 

“I was there,” Leonie cuts in, “The Battle of the Monastery. I was there. I don’t like it any more than he does, but if—”

Whatever she was saying, the Lordling clearly isn’t interested. “Were you now? And just whose side were you on?”

“ _ Mine _ .”

The Lordling snorts derisively. “Yeah. Sounds about right. So then, you don’t think it sounded like the beast?”

“No. It sounded like a waste of our time. Yours, in particular.”

“Why mine?”

“I’d think a Lord has better things to spend his time than chasing a soldier’s fever dream.”

“But you did hear something—” the first man attempts to say before the Lordling cuts him off with another aggravated noise.

“Enough! I’m done dragging about in the snow because you’re sniffling coward, Egil. If they were having problems up top we’d have seen a signal by now. C’mon. Blast them all, the sellswords are right. There’s better things to do, and a war to win.”

Footsteps crunch closer and once again the parade passes her by with mere flashes of uniforms. Three Empire, and two… two are the mis-matched standard of a Merc crew. Sure, the Lordling had been calling them sellswords all along, but seeing clear proof of the distinction makes Byleth feel a little easier about her friends appearing among their enemies.

Maybe it shouldn’t. Leonie’s dismissal of having been on “her own” side during the battle at the Monastery left a cold spot in Byleth’s stomach; one that hardened to ice as she considered the implications. It was more clear than ever that time had passed between her fall and the present, though it was difficult to be sure how much. Months? A year? Given the snow, it was at least nearing the latter.

A sudden noise—a sharp intake of breath—draws her attention. Byleth refocuses upon the path and is surprised to see Leonie standing there in full view, lagging behind her compatriots. Byleth’s mouth dries.

She remembers the Leonie she’d seen only an hour before; battle alert, wielding a lance, and wearing an Academy uniform. 

This Leonie is different in more ways than Byleth can numerate. It isn’t just the added couple inches of height, or the length of the woman’s hair, previously kept shorn and now swept into a side-tail that reaches past her shoulders. No. This Leonie is grim and wary-eyed in a way Byleth had never before seen on her, but which she recognizes all the same. This is a Leonie who has seen war.

Her hands clutch a bow with an arrow pre-knocked for trouble, and her eyes are focused on the house. Focused on Byleth. 

They stare at each other for what feels like an eternity, though Byleth is certain nothing but her eye ought to be visible. Then, from the road beyond, Luca shouts, “Is there a problem?” 

Leonie’s hesitation is palpable. Just as Byleth tenses to fight—to kill the Empire soldiers, at least, if she must—Leonie shakes her head. 

“No. Just a deer.” She turns away, jogging to meet up with the group without further comment or a backward glance. 

#

Thoughts reeling, Byleth waits by the window as her breath mists the air around her and the cold seeps into her bones. Part of her wants them to come back. Her good sense and rationality are glad when they don’t. Even if Luca and Leonie provided answers to some of her questions, there’s too much  _ she _ would have to answer. And, if she’s being honest, given their current company she doesn’t want to test their loyalties. 

Would they fight for her, or against her? She wants to believe they would hear her out. But without knowing what’s happened, or how to explain it, her faith is shakey.

Once she’s certain she’s alone, Byleth returns to the mirror. First things first; she must hide the most significant alterations; her ears. Seiros—Rhea—had managed with the help of a headdress. That wouldn’t work in Byleth’s case, unless she could find a helmet somewhere. Even so, she would have to take that off eventually. 

Flayn and Seteth used their own hair. Byleth never thought to ask how Flayn got so much volume out of her pigtails. Now she wishes she had as she runs trembling, numb fingers through her locks in an effort to recreate the trick. Instead of volume, she only builds static. Her hair puffs in a half-halo around her head that does nothing to obscure her ears. In fact, it draws more attention to them. 

Aggravated, Byleth touches a metal stud on her armor and winces at the shock. Maybe braids, instead.

More carefully this time, Byleth parts her hair down the middle and tries to remember how Ingrid used to braid her hair. It wasn’t something she’d ever tried herself before… or had she? 

Vague memories of sitting with some of her children resurface, like rising from a murky pool. Several of them liked to style their hair that way. So had she, sometimes. The headache behind Byleth’s eyes grows a little stronger, but her fingers remember the way. 

The first style she tries—two thick braided ropes—don’t work quite right. They obscure her ears, sure, but only because they were braided around her own flesh. Anyone within a few feet of her would realize what she’d done, and question it. 

Next, she lets the hair hang loose to her chin, before looping the hair around itself and beginning a pair of braids that hang over each shoulder. This works better, though Byleth isn’t certain her knots will hold or that she’ll be able to fight without her hair getting in the way. Besides that, her hair is still considerably thinner than Flayn’s. This style makes it poof a little more, but were it to get wet… 

Byleth sighs and takes it apart again. Her final attempt is the simplest. She simply scoops her hair back into a thick, looped tail, securing it with it’s own ends. Then she pulls sections out along the sides of her head which obscure her ears just enough to give lie to their sharpness. A few sections hang loose to frame her face. 

The effect isn’t perfect, though it will work for the moment. Ultimately, she’ll need to find some kind of headband or helmet to wear, sooner than later. 

Or, she could simply be herself. 

Frowning at the mirror, Byleth waits and listens for one more moment before leaving the farmhouse behind. There is no sound; no footsteps, no breathing besides her own. Leonie and Luca are not coming back.

And why would they? All Leonie could possibly have seen was an eye watching her from the window. If she thought it was an ambush she would have attacked. Instead, she’d lied and left. Byleth wants to see this as a good sign; an indication that Leonie’s pact with the soldiers  _ is _ only surface level. Mercenaries go where the coin is good, after all, and the war they mentioned would mean coin a’plenty. At least from the winning side.

With that disquieting thought, Byleth steps off the porch and back into the snow. Here, the trail she’d carved earlier curves away from the road, through the field toward the cliff. If the soldiers had gone just a little further they would have seen it. If they come back, she suspects they will. If she ventures further into the ghosttown they  _ definitely  _ will. 

Byleth’s gaze returns to the distant spiral of smoke rising above the treeline. The soldiers had come from that direction, and returned the same way. It didn’t take a genius to figure that was where their camp lay, particularly given the derelict state of all the houses in sight. 

She could move further away, circle through the fields toward the monastery end of town. There might be a house in better condition where she could build a small fire and try looting supplies from the area. That plan came with two obvious problems: one, the smoke trail from her own hearth would alert the soldiers to her presence; and two, given the state of the houses she can’t believe there’d be much in the way of supplies. She might have fire, but she won’t have food or proper clothing. 

That left two alternate options. Either she follows the soldiers into their camp and see where the chips fall, or… 

Once again, her eyes return to the cliffside and the monastery buildings above. From this angle, she can better see the walls and towers of her old home. From such a distance, the monastery seems fine at first. But the longer Byleth looks, the more certain she is that portions are missing. Half a building here, a spire there. The moon terrace stands, but a chunk is missing from the abby roofline directly below. 

From what she’d overheard, it sounded like there was a garrison stationed there; albeit a small one. It could also be a good place to get answers and supplies. 

Both options were fraught with potential violence. With her burning heart and stomach full of icy dread, Byleth isn’t sure she’d mind a little violence. She does, however, mind the notion of opposing old friends. Much as she longs to speak with them properly, it isn’t worth the risk of facing them in battle. 

Swallowing her own doubt, Byleth follows her own trail back into the snowy field. She’ll cut across it to the monastery road a little further from town. Should the soldiers return, with any luck they’d confuse her tracks for a wandering animal.

#

She breathes warmth into her limbs twice more before she reaches the summit. This is worrisome, though not because it might kill her. It won’t— _ probably _ . The changes wrought upon her body pushed Byleth too far along the draconic bloodline for such mundanity, but that isn’t any comfort. If she freezes, she’ll face something worse than death: sleep. Not mortal sleep, but the true, coma-like sleep from which there will be no immediate waking.

If she’s discovered sleeping in the snow, particularly by the enemy said to be present here, she imagines it won’t be long before her heart once again decorates the sword at her side. There may not be any returning from a second such mutilation. Especially without Rhea’s help.

Rhea… 

She pauses just inside the monastery gate, where the market had once been. The space stands empty now, but for a collection of ruined materials thrown haphazardly into the back corner. Byleth frowns, taking a moment to let the oddity of the situation sink in. 

As she’d come to expect, her memory and reality are at odds. There were Knights of the Order stationed here when she fell. The entrance hall doors were opened wide to the groans of the sick and dying in their makeshift infirmary. A lonesome wind, howling through broken windows has replaced their cries.

Byleth scans the walls for sentries. The conversation below  _ had _ implied a garrison here. Sure enough, she’d seen a trail leading down the mountain path to the old township, nearly as fresh as her own. Clearly, it was cut by the same group she’d seen that morning. Going on that logic, someone ought to have challenged Byleth’s presence by now. Right?

But there’s nothing, and no one.

The snow is just as deep within the walls as it was below, saving for a narrow funnel carved through the center. The rutted, dirty drifts lead up the stairs and around through the stables; bypassing the entrance hall, which is closed and barred. Someone—many someones—have been here. So where are they?

Byleth takes a deep breath, inhaling the chilly, damp scent of snow and rot. And blood. 

A shiver that has nothing to do with the weather snakes down Byleth’s spine.  _ Fresh  _ blood. Somewhere nearby, drifting on the breeze. 

Once again, her gaze roams up to the walls. It takes a few passes before she realizes what she’s seeing; what she’d taken for a forgotten banner spilling over an embrasure is actually a torn cloak. Beneath the clock, noticeable only when the wind picks up, dangles a limp, booted foot. Further down, pale and frigid fingers cling to a parapet. A spear shaft juts unnaturally from behind the stone. 

Someone else  _ has _ been here. Whomever they were, they’re just as bloodthirsty as Byleth. Possibly moreso. Her gut twists uneasily at the thought. Will this person be friend or foe? 

The cloak colours are clearly Imperial, so… 

For a brief moment, Byleth considers turning around. She has enough reserves to make it back to town, she thinks. Maybe. If she doesn’t mind a little frostbite on her extremities. 

However, this doesn’t really change anything, does it? She’d come up here with every intention of killing any Empire soldiers she found. Whomever got to them before she did was saving her a lot of trouble. If they turned out to be extraordinarily competent bandits or the like, well, that didn’t necessarily change her plans. Maybe that could even work in her favour. No; there isn’t any need to turn around. She only needs to be smart about her approach.

Byleth considers the hundred-odd places where someone might watch this entrance, and the tracks etched into the snow. She could follow the path already cut and avoid laying a fresh trail at the obvious risk of there being an ambush laid just around the corner. Or, she could cut her own path… the entrance hall is barred, and the windows are too narrow to climb through. Perhaps there’s a way in through the kitchens?

Another stiff wind cuts like knives through her inadequate clothing. Byleth shudders, resisting the urge to reach for that waning source of internal heat. Her last stumble nearly sent her tumbling over the cliff a second time. Better not to risk it.

The kitchen. She’ll head for the kitchen. Though she might have to break a few panes of glass to get inside, the building will offer better protection from the elements.

Byleth pauses near the pile of market debris to pick out a long stick that was probably once a spear or flagpost. When she diverges from the main path near the entrance hall doors, she walks backwards and uses the stick to roll snow over her tracks in an effort to obscure them. It’s a painstaking, silly process, but she feels better for making the effort. She gives it up for “good enough” when she rounds the first corner away from the market stairs, then trudges more brazenly up the second flight to the kitchen. 

With every step she anticipates the whizz of an arrow, or a shout of alarm. 

Nothing happens. 

By the time Byleth reaches the dining hall door it’s apparent that whomever has been living here hasn’t made use of this building. The hall is dark, and the crates stacked just outside of it have been left to the elements so long they’ve all rotted through. Busted window panes reveal the same long tables and benches she remembers remain inside; most are overturned and knocked askew, but they seem intact. 

Both doors are barred.

Byleth casts another terse look around, down to the frozen pond beneath her, and up to the walls where nothing living moves. She pauses. There’s another body collapsed over a parapet, and bright smears of crimson on the snow. The smell of blood, when it comes to her on the wind, is heady and strong. 

Had that been there a moment ago? She thinks so, but she’d been too invested in the dining hall to be sure. Better to get inside quickly, where she can break line of sight if necessary.

She takes a breath, lifts the stick, and finishes busting out the bottom panes of the nearest window. It makes an uncomfortable amount of noise. When she’s cleared the edges of glass, Byleth ducks through. Instantly, she moves to the side so that her back is to the wall rather than open air, and draws her sword as she waits for her eyes to adjust. 

Though the hall is studded with a good many windows, the glass was semi-opaque to begin with. Add a fair amount of dust accumulation and they may as well be stone. The only light to be had comes streaming through the broken portions, casting random spotlights on scattered furniture, utensils, and grizzly stains that could be anything from mouldered food, to rat corpses, to excrement. The accompanying smell is pretty bad. It would be far, far worse in the summer, no doubt. 

A faint scratching noise draws her attention upward, to the rafters.

A hundred pairs of eyes reflect back at her, silent and judgemental as the day they were born. 

“Hello, there. I’ve come home,” she whispers to the monastery’s cats, and wonders if any of these are the ones she knew. If they do recognize her, none of them seem inclined to welcome her. A tail twitches here; a whisker flicks there. Not a single mewl of welcome.

“Alright. Don’t mind me, then.”

She sucks a breath in through her nose and immediately regrets it. Byleth stuffs the side of her arm into her mouth in an effort to muffle the gagging, coughing fit. When it subsides, she wipes her eyes and peers across the room to the twin sets of doors that lead into the courtyards. Both are closed. The windows on that side of the room are also in better repair, which makes sense given they’re better protected by the surrounding walls. It also means she can’t see anything or anyone who could be lurking just outside.

Still, no voices; no alarms. Nor even human footsteps; only the padding of cats in the rafters, some of whom have lost interest enough to wander. 

Carefully, Byleth picks her way through the rubble. As she goes, she casts a weather eye toward the kitchens—but anything there wouldn’t be edible. Of that, she has very little doubt.

The courtyard doors are both locked. She finds a broken window to peer through, quickly noting the derelict state of the courtyard beyond; withered and dry hedges; empty, rotting benches; quiet whistling of winter wind. The snow drifts don’t look as deep, but that’s about the only improvement. 

After several more minutes of silence and stillness, Byleth breaks another set of window panes, and slips outside once more. 

With the hedgerows withered, she can clearly see the Academy plaza just ahead of her and the gazebo off to her far right. Further still are the stables and the knights’ quarters; all of which remain eerily silent. 

Byleth’s fingers tighten around her sword hilt as her gaze finds the window of her father’s old quarters. Would his things still be there? Probably not, she decides. That’s even less likely than her own rooms going untouched.

It’s then she recalls the journal hidden inside her mattress. Only Seteth knew where it was, or that it even existed. What if it—

She fights the urge to break and run for her room. If the journal is there, it can wait. If it’s not… 

“Stupid,” she mutters at herself, her voice sounding uncannily like Sothis’ in that moment. Byleth frowns, and adds that to the list of things she’s choosing to ignore. 

Abbey or Academy? That’s the big question. 

The trail she was avoiding lead to the stables. From this angle she cannot see whether it continues further into the complex or stops there, but if a garrison was hiding somewhere in this ruin there’s only three solid choices for accommodations: the knights’ quarters, the abbey, or the cathedral. Perhaps the Academy, she supposes, but the dorms were altogether too spread out to be properly defensible. They weren’t  _ meant _ to need defense. 

No, the knights’ quarters would make the most sense, followed shortly by the abbey itself. Both were designed with defense and staff accomodations in mind. Furthermore, she can see from here that the abbey’s main door is not barred from the outside. Neither is the door nearer the Academy. Now that she’s looking, there are dents in the snow which imply someone having walked there recently, though fresh snowfall has begun to obscure the path. All of this only serves to underscore the fact that she has yet to be challenged. 

Given the bodies, however… Could the tracks belong to the killer? 

There’s only one way to find out.

Byleth sucks in a breath and darts quickly to the side door, near the Academy courtyard. She pauses beneath the archway, looking back out across the courtyard and over to the dormitory windows. Nothing moves. 

Slowly, Byleth inches the side door open enough to listen at the crack. She doesn’t need to bother; the air spilling from the doorway reeks of death. 

Only after taking a deep breath of fresh, outside air does Byleth open the door enough to slip inside. But no matter how stealthy she’s being, anyone paying attention would have seen her entrance. The interior of the abbey is dim and the light spilling through the open door is strong. It streaks across the interior stonework; sparkles upon the pools of blood spreading from beneath stiff and cooling limbs; highlights surprised and rigid faces. 

Three corpses clog the entranceway, all in Empire dress. Byleth rounds the foyer to see two more in the open doorway at the end of an unrecognizable hall. 

Sure, the architecture remains mostly the same, though vines choke the broken bottom windows and the higher panes are largely obscured by dust. The tables and chairs are gone, replaced with lines of bedrolls, thin running boards, and a fire pit toward the back corner surrounded by cooking accoutrement. It looks more like a thieves' den than a proper garrison. 

Maybe it was. Soldiers had a way of going sour, particularly in war zones. Perhaps, left alone with little contact from the main forces, as their fellows below implied, this lot had turned to banditry in their idle time. That would explain the surplus of gold coins scattered alongside a spilt gaming deck, and the reason these men had been slaughtered. Someone come for vengeance? 

Byleth hums lightly to herself as she treads through the middle of the room, counting bedrolls as she passes. Five dead in this room, and at least three on the walls outside… 

No.  _ Six  _ in this room, Byleth corrects herself as she reaches the junction at the far end where another body slumps upon the stairs to the second story. Reduced from twenty bedrolls, that’s eleven unaccounted soldiers. Possibly more, if they were also utilizing the rooms upstairs. 

The large double doors to her right exit upon the cathedral bridge. They’re shut tight at present, and there are no windows at this end to reveal any sentries—or bodies—which might stand guard. Before and behind her are the doors back to the academy, and to the graveyard, respectively. The graveyard… The last Byleth had seen of it, Flayn had opened a passageway for their people to escape through. Would it still be open? Had they managed to complete the journey before the monastery was razed? 

She could go check. She could also investigate the upper stories, here, where there might be clothing which wasn’t stained with blood and excrement. If there wasn’t, she’d return to salvage what she could from the corpses. With that, and mindful of the killer likely still on the loose, Byleth slips quietly past the body on the stairs and up into the abbey’s second story. 

Two more bodies greet her at the landing, fallen just outside the cracked-open doors to Rhea’s audience chamber. Byleth kneels beside one, pressing her fingers briefly to his neck. Still warm. 

Rising, she steps lightly over the fallen man, and eases up to the door. Taking a quiet, sustaining breath, she holds it and listens. For a moment she hears nothing, then— _ there _ . Somewhere on the other side of the hall she can hear them; breath deep, even… sleeping?

Carefully, Byleth pushes the door open another few inches and peers through. 

The audience hall’s polished marble floor is scratched and crowded with several pallets of a slightly more luxurious nature. Furs, discarded pillows, and scattered personal effects litter the floor. Again, someone built a make-shift fireplace; this one stationed in the alcove which used to house the statue of Saint Seiros. Above it, several bricks have been knocked from the wall to allow an avenue of escape. 

At the far end of the room, sunlight streams through the large stained glass window above the Archbishop’s dias. It’s the only one she’s seen which is entirely intact, much less clean. Whomever the denizens of this room were—officers, most likely—they must be… must have  _ been _ more fastidious than the room’s current state would suggest. 

But she doesn’t see anyone. Byleth frowns. The sound of breathing remains; undisturbed by her presence. Perhaps they are within the office chamber just off to the side, but—no. No, they ought to be near the window. It’s difficult to see with the light in her eyes, but there’s an odd, dark shape just beneath it. She’d taken it for oddly shaped pile of furs. 

Byleth pushes the door open a little more, taking first one step inside, then two. 

The rhythmic breathing changes, startling, as the fur pile shifts.

What she’d taken for a pale pelt in the strange, amber light is revealed to be shaggy, uneven hair. The man lifts his face to her, and the Sword of the Creator drops from Byleth’s numb, shaking fingers. 

“Dimitri?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: Ever just post something you've worked on really hard for a long time, and then the minute its live suddenly see a whole crap ton of tiny grammatical errors? Yeah. Me, too.


	5. Of Monsters and Men

**Day 21 Ethereal Moon, Year 1185 **

Seeing Leonie in so different of circumstances was disorienting. The sight of Dimitri is almost too much to bear. 

His face is haggard and gaunt beneath limp, unwashed and shaggy hair. The strange black leathers he wears, absent of any standard or emblem, are blood stained and dingy. Worse yet, as his gaze rises to meet hers, that one forelock which was always trying to obscure the right side of his face falls back to reveal a patch where his eye ought to be. 

There is almost no resemblance between this wretched creature and the man she’d known. Yet, she does know him. Her heart sings with his presence, even as guilt clogs her throat.

“Dimitri,” she says again, and takes three quick steps forward only to stop short as his lips twist into a grimace. Despite it all, nothing in his appearance has prepared her for the rusty, dejected voice which crosses his lips. 

“I should have known,” rasps the ghoul of her former friend. “I should have known you would come to haunt me, too.”

“What? Haunt you? Why would I haunt you?”

Cold, joyless laughter bubbles up Dimitri’s throat. It dies as quickly as it comes. He tips his head back against the cold stone to watch her with his single remaining eye. 

“Why would you not? I’m only surprised you waited this long. But then, I never returned for you, did I? How you must hate me, leaving you here so long at the mercy of those foul beasts.”

Mind reeling, and unable to process what sounds to her like a continuation of a conversation she doesn’t remember starting, Byleth says the first thing that comes to mind, “I don’t hate you.”

He makes a sound somewhere between a sob and laugh, shaking his head in disbelief.

Slowly, Byleth turns to glance over her shoulder at the open doors behind herself. The hall is dark, but in the dimness she can still see the bodies lying on the floor. Dimitri is unchanged when she returns her attention to him. 

“Dimitri… did you do this? Did you kill these men?”

“Not all of them. There’s a group cowering in the cathedral. I’ll see them out next.” His throat bobs as his voice grows even softer, a whisper of the boy he’d been leaking through as he adds, “I just need a moment more. Please?”

Byleth swallows thickly against a sudden wave of nausea. Nothing about this world feels right—it hasn’t since the moment she escaped the void—but this is worse than she could have imagined. She expected accusations and anger. She has no idea what to make of his cold, casual acceptance. Except… 

Is it actually  _ her  _ he’s accepted? What he’s said doesn’t really make a lot of sense for someone addressing another person. 

Another conversation springs to mind, one had only a few hours ago by her reckoning. They’d been in the lower chambers, in what she now recognizes as a reconstruction of her former throne room in Zanado. What was it he’d said? After Edelgard fled, Dimitri spoke of vengeance for those lost in the original massacre of Duscar. She couldn’t recall the exact wording, only the impression that he’d spoken of them almost as though they were still alive. Like they had a voice in matters at hand.

Like… ghosts? Is that what he thinks?

As though approaching a wounded animal, Byleth closes the distance between them. Dimitri watches her, expression unchanging as she crouches before him. He reeks of death; of old sweat and musk. Whatever has happened, it’s clearer than ever that he is alone. He’s  _ been _ alone. For how long is uncertain, and Byleth is suddenly afraid to ask.

“You don’t have to move—” she begins, and cuts herself off as she rethinks her words. 

He seems certain there are soldiers in the cathedral, and given the number of unaccounted for beds she has no reason not to believe him. The way he phrased it also implies they know someone has been murdering their fellows on this side of the bridge. Even if they don’t as yet they’re sure to realize the truth sooner than later. 

Technically, that is more a problem for the soldiers than they. Dimitri was always a formidable warrior, and from what she’s seen of his work today, he remains so. Together, she has little doubt they’ll be able to take a reasonably sized force. That isn’t the point. They can’t stay here without inviting an ambush.

She’d come here understanding there would be a fight; she’d even wanted one to a certain point. Now, seeing him and what he’s come to, she finds herself far more concerned with finding a place to hide them both. Hide them, heal them, and figure out where to go from there. 

“I know you’re tired,” she corrects, and tips her hand toward him in offering, “I am, too. Why don’t we let them be? Find somewhere better to rest?”

Dimitri’s reply, when it comes, is increasingly bewildered. “And allow those monsters to continue their desecration? To spit on the graves of those they murdered?”

Beneath his confusion is a rage that Byleth understands all too well. It’s the same sort she felt down in the valley listening to those soldiers converse with her former friends. The same rage that urged her toward this place, bloody-minded and careless of the lives her lack of planning would cost. 

_ Does _ she care about the Empire soldiers? 

She doesn’t  _ want  _ to, but that isn’t the same as not caring at all. Where moments ago they were little more than walking uniforms—similar to all those she’d slain on battlefields before them—suddenly, reflected in the eyes of this man she knew, they have become people again, and Byleth is sickened by herself. 

Through sheer force of will, she swallows her emotions. Dimitri needs her to be strong. Thankfully, it’s easier to be so for him than for her own sake. 

Speaking as gently as she can, Byleth lies, “There aren’t any monsters here. Only people. I think they’ve learned a lesson, don’t you? We could slip away, now. Maybe take shelter in the Old Chapel ruins until we’re rested for the hike down.”

The change in Dimitri comes on slow and subtle. As Byleth silently makes a list of supplies to take from this room and the chamber beneath, his gaze narrows and sharpens upon her face. It flickers around her form, as though he’s noting all the minute changes in her since last they’d met, before finally focusing on her outstretched hand. 

With aching slowness, he reaches for her—

Only to yank his back after the briefest touch, his single eye wide and alarmed. Dimitri’s entire body goes rigid. His breath is quick and ragged in a manner more befitting a man who has seen a ghost rather than a living girl. 

Before Byleth can make sense of what’s happening, Dimitri is shoving her away as he climbs to his feet. He snatches his lance away from the wall it was leaning against, storming several feet towards the door before Byleth can scramble after him. Her mind reels both at the force of his reaction, and his newfound height. She hadn’t quite appreciated how large he’d grown until he was towering above her. 

“Dimitri!”

“Where  _ were  _ you?!” He whirls on her, forcing Byleth to come up short or run directly into him. 

Where was she? Byleth freezes, her mind slamming against a wall of uncertainty. Her lips move; soundless. This is the question she’s been dreading for hours; ever since she’d seen Leonie and Luca in the town below. It was among the chiefmost reasons why she hadn’t revealed herself to them. 

_ Where was she _ ? 

“I was sleeping,” she mumbles automatically. That isn’t a lie. It also isn’t believable to anyone outside her immediate family. She shouldn’t be surprised when Dimitri sneers, but part of her had hoped. 

“Sleeping.” 

Again he laughs that wretched, broken laugh. This time, with that same hysterical note which had krept in when Edelgard was unmasked; when Dimitri understood how the girl had betrayed him. 

The look he gives her is colder than any ice-choked river, and just as fit to drown her. 

“We looked for you. For  _ days _ we looked for you. Dedue and I risked everything:  _ Faerghus;  _ the  _ monastery;  _ our  _ lives. _ We hid, and we searched even while it swarmed with soldiers. We dug through every  _ inch  _ of rubble we could reach. When we had to leave, I—”

He cuts himself off as moves in, looming over her with menace in his eye and barely contained fury trembling through his voice. 

“I saw you fall,” he whispers, and then repeats with every word a biting piece of shrapnel chipping away at her stone heart, “I. Saw. You. Fall. Byleth. And still, I waited for you to come back. We all waited. Until there wasn’t any room left for waiting. And now here you are, and all you have to say is that you were  _ sleeping _ ?”

“I did fall. I  _ was _ sleeping.”

He scoffs, beginning to turn from her again. Byleth tries catches him by the hand, only to have fingers slapped away. Dimitri glowers at her, and she latches desperately onto every reserve she has left to prevent herself from crying out of frustration and grief. 

She has no right to tears. His anger is justified; completely justified. This is all her fault, after all. From the very beginning, it was all her fault. She slept, and people died. That is on her. 

Why should he believe anything she has to say? Even if she weren’t short-changing her answer, at best, and a liar at worst, that explanation is no explanation at all. Perhaps it would have been, once, when the world and its magic were new and strong. But this world’s magic is in tatters. The more gods destroyed by the Agarthans, and those like them, the more magic has weakened and waned. The humans of this time only know their weak little workings and think that is all magic can be. They give lip service to, but have never  _ seen _ , the wonders a god can weave. 

It’s up to her to show them; to teach them.

“I did fall,” Byleth repeats again. She takes a ragged breath, because she knows what has to come next. “You remember Solon, don’t you?”

His stare is burning and incredulous, but he says nothing. She takes this as agreement. 

“He opened a rift in the world and sent me into darkness. I was only able to escape because—”

“Because the Goddess blessed you,” Dimitri finishes for her, his voice sizzling with cynicism and resentment. 

The truth wilts in the face of his anger. 

“I—when I fell, I knew I would die if I hit the river from that height. So I reopened the rift. I threw myself into the void, thinking I could let myself out further down, where the fall wouldn’t be as bad.”

Dimitri’s brow furrows at this, as though he’s considering her statement. She takes this as a good sign and plunges on. “And that’s exactly what happened. But when I came out—it was just a few hours ago, now. Everything is wrong. And I don’t know what’s going on.”

“You said you were sleeping.”

“I—I was. That is…” That statement is harder to walk back from, and again Byleth is torn. Again, she wonders if she ought to simply tell the entire truth and be done with it. Just  _ be _ herself. Would that go over as awfully as she imagines?

She remembers that night in the Blue Lion’s classroom, only a few months ago by her reckoning, when she finally opened up and told her Lions about her fears concerning the church, and her attempts at getting answers from the Western Church. Her Lions—her friends—had accepted what she said. No judgement. No questioning of her sanity. No one denouncing her as a heretic.

It was one thing to claim amnesia. It was quite another to claim godhood. Which was the exact reason she’d so quickly returned to keeping secrets. Again. 

To be fair, Byleth had never promised to tell them everything—not aloud. That doesn’t absolve her guilt when she considers just how much she withheld— _ is _ withholding. And how much all those silences and omissions might have cost her. 

Before she can come to any decision, Dimitri makes a disgusted, dismissive noise. He turns away from her, marching for the door with rigid precision. 

“Wait, please—”

“I have vermin to exterminate,” says Dimitri, his voice even and inflectionless, “Come along if you must, but I warn you: do not get in my way.”

“And if I do?”

He says nothing, but the look he throws over his shoulder speaks volumes. It is the same cold, remorseless stare she saw that night when he thought—however briefly—that she’d led the Lions into an ambush on purpose.

If she tries to stop him now, their friendship may never recover. Which begs the question of which is worth more to her: Dimitri, or the soldiers of their shared enemy squatting in the ruins of her family’s defiled nest? Not really a question worth asking, in the end.

#

“Tell me you aren’t going to charge them.”

Dimitri says nothing. He doesn’t even look in her direction. His attention is focused entirely upon the small contingent of soldiers positioned behind a barricade at the far end of the bridge. The gap is too wide for the bows the soldiers are equipped with, otherwise the pair would have been pincushioned already. That said, they won’t make it halfway across before the vollies are released. 

To make matters worse, the cathedral and its entry bridge are in poor repair. The towers to either side have crumbled, and the portcullis is missing. The doors are charred black, as though there’s been a fire inside. Holes litter the bridges’ length, some large enough to make Byleth wonder that it's still able to support a person’s weight. 

The barricade on the cathedral side seems half new construction, half a relic of a lost battle. Pews make up a fair portion of the impromptu wall; those nearest the top are solid, if dusty, while the bottom half is moulded and rotting in place. Over the top, she can just make out the heads and shoulders of the men waiting for them. Early evening sunlight glints off their helmets, throwing sparkles of light across the stonework.

A stiff wind howls through the chasm, tugging at Byleth’s hair and raising gooseflesh along her arms. She remembers how warm it was indoors, relatively speaking, and wishes she had lit a fire when she had a chance. 

“There’s just the two of them,” someone across the way is saying. “We can rush them, easy.”

“Didn’t you see what he did to Josh and Grisham? I ain’t goin’ over there. He’s a demon, that one.”

Dimitri’s shoulders hunch a little further. It’s clear he can hear them, and just as clear that he takes the comment to heart. With her years being hailed as a demon, Byleth can relate. She also can’t blame those men. They know they’re about to die. Let them have their words while they can. 

Her focus has to remain on Dimitri, who seems bent upon this course as though it’s the only path available to him. It isn’t, though. He must know that. What’s more, there was a time when he would have been asking her the same questions. She recalls that younger version, and the sadness in his eyes before every bandit camp they charged. He understood why it had to be done, but he had never seemed to relish it. 

Dimitri’s face is impassive, now. Dark and moody; not desiring the fight, but not seeming to care for those who will soon die, either. So why was he pressing the issue?

“We still don’t have to do this,” she says softly. “We can offer them mercy. Let them leave this place with their lives.”

“Mercy,” he spits. “Do think they offered mercy to the people left behind?” 

She swallows thickly. “Which people?”

“The ones in the cathedral. They didn’t all come when they were called. Too scared, some of them. We carved them a path and they didn’t take it. Where do you think the barricades came from?” 

Though she’d been hoping for a different answer, Byleth isn’t surprised. While the Monastery had a large armed force, the majority of its inhabitants had always been non-combatants. Those who had run to the cathedral for safety during the initial attack where scared, confused, and unaware of any escape route other than the main gate where the attack had been center. And no one—not her, not Rhea, nor Dimitri, nor Claude—had stayed to make certain the civilians followed through on their instructions. She was supposed to, but she’d gone after Seiros instead. 

No. Their deaths were not to be blamed on the victims’ own lack of instruction or foresight. But she wasn’t sure if it was any more fair to rest the blame on these soldiers, either.

“You can’t know that all of them took part in that. Or they might not have had much choice. You know how army conscription works.”

“Perhaps they weren’t,” he breathes. Before she can hope he’s changed his mind, Dimitri turns to her with cruelty in his eye and mocking subservience in his tone. “You think they are guilty of nothing else, is that it, dear Professor?”

“I didn’t say—”

“Leaving aside that they chose to follow  _ Her _ ; they chose to attack a place of worship; chose to put priests to the fire… Do you think they had part in choosing to pillage from the survivors until nothing and no one was left? To follow their commander’s edicts to the edge of allowable cruelty? Yes, I know how conscription works. And  _ you _ are well aware of the depravities of soldiers left to seed.”

Byleth’s mouth seals closed. She wants to argue, but she can’t. It isn’t just that his words echo thoughts she’d had only a short time ago. No, he’s purposely throwing at her things she’d said to him over the past year, during their private conversations about the morality of war. She’d shared with Dimitri stories of her youth with the mercenary company, illustrating points with personal anecdotes of soldiers who took whatever they pleased from the common people; of bandits trained by the very nobles now paying for their executions.

“Some people never return from the battlefield, even when their bodies are able,” she’d told him one night when the air was muggy and they sat, shoulder to shoulder in the shadow of a hedge, pretending their fingers weren’t threaded together in the grass. “They’ve seen too much, or they’ve learned a taste for it, or they feel it’s the only thing they’re any good at anymore. Even when Lord Whoever doesn’t disband his forces, these people are left to rot in derelict, backwoods garrisons and checkpoints. They learn to make their own fun. It doesn’t always turn ugly, but it happens often enough to be predictable. I feel sorry for them, despite it all. That doesn’t change the choices they made.” 

“Maybe not,” he’d argued, then. The thinnest note of pleading crept into his voice as he refused to meet her gaze. “But it does not have to end that way, does it? Surely, if their Liege were paying attention they would have been recalled. Perhaps offered counselling by their priest. There has to be a way to bring people back from that edge without killing them.”

Back from the edge. 

Those long distant words echo in her mind as she considers the man presently beside her. Did his words truly sound so desperate back then? Had she been that oblivious? Or is that only a trick of the mind, rewriting history now that she’s seen what he’s come to? 

She swallows down her guilt and apprehension, turning her gaze back upon the soldiers still watching them from the other side of the bridge. 

“I am aware,” she says, “But—”

Too late. Byleth realizes her mistake too late. 

The sun, which had been sinking fast as they stood there, waiting, spills bloody light across the face of the cathedral. The remaining window panes glitter and blaze. The reflections of the soldiers’ helmets grow brighter. And beneath them, the soldiers squint and blink rapidly in an effort to maintain sight of their aggressors who stand clear, in the protective shadow of the abbey.

Dimitri charges with a roar.

#

It’s over quickly. That’s the best Byleth can say for it. They stand before the cathedral with blood congealing around their feet, and she listens as Dimitri’s adrenaline-fueled breathing calms and evens. 

For all that he boiled his actions down to pest removal, from his slouched posture, and the way he hides his face from her it is clear to Byleth how little stock he puts into his own words. 

Slowly, deliberately, Dimitri releases his lance to grab an arrow protruding from his shoulder. Some lucky or talented soldier had landed a single shot before the Prince closed the gap. The wound wasn’t deep enough to stop him, though, or even slow him down. Byleth had barely needed to intervene in what followed, though her blade is not spotless.

He yanks the arrow free and looks at tip, bright red with his own blood, as more seeps down his arm. 

Byleth’s blood runs cold. Not because of the wind chill or the fact that she still hadn’t found herself a cloak, but because her students  _ knew better _ . Especially Dimitri. She had drilled battlefield safety into their heads over, and over again. She scheduled special lessons with Manuela to make certain that even those without the skill for magic could dress a wound or safely remove an arrow. 

As Dimitri had just completely ignored, on top of a full-hearty charge across the bridge. He knew perfectly well that don’t rip an arrowhead out like that, especially without a tourniquet or stitching at the ready. He knew not to rush headlong into battle without telling his team. Was he  _ trying  _ to hurt himself? Get himself killed?

“You could have waited to do that,” Byleth snaps. “I would have helped. I know my healing magic isn’t very strong but—”

The truth pierces her gut, swift as the arrow that hit him and choking off her tirade. Wasn’t it obvious? Dimitri’s unwashed, uncared for state. His missing eye. His foolhardy, unnecessary charge across the bridge. His entire attack on this garrison.

He  _ was _ hurting himself. He  _ intended _ to get himself killed. 

Shaking, she wipes her blade clean and sheathes it, moving to look inside the cathedral. Her voice is kinder as she mumbles, “Come here? Let me see.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Dimitri—”

He rounds on her once again, throwing the bloody arrow into the stained and dingy snow as he snaps, “Why are you so persistent? Do you not see? Even now, are you so blind?”

Byleth held her breath a moment, reminding herself to be gentle. “What do I not see?”

His breath quavers. “You said there were no monsters here, but I…”

The words linger between them for a long moment before the wind whips them away. In the silence that follows, Byleth wonders that the entire world cannot hear her heart breaking. 

“You aren’t the monster, Dimitri,” she says. “I—”

I am, she was going to say.

Her words gutter and die in her throat, but for the first time that isn’t due to her own cowardice. Rather, she looks at the dead men at their feet. Dimitri killed them without mercy—this is true. Just as he’d killed Edelgard’s soldiers in the temple, the day everything ended. 

What is also true is that, had he not been here—or there—she would have done the same in his stead. Furthermore, Byleth would have killed them for the same reasons. She’d only changed her tune because she hadn’t wanted  _ Dimitri  _ to stain his hands with this. She wanted him to—to what? To remain pure? Innocent?

Neither of them were innocent. None of these men were, either. She knows that. Hadn’t Dimitri rubbed that knowledge in her face once already? 

Earlier, when Byleth told Dimitri there weren’t any monsters here, she’d been lying. In her heart, she knew the only monster present was herself. 

She was the monster who razed the Agarthans to the ground for the sake of her brother. The monster who doomed her children to an eternity of torture at the hands of their murderers. The monster who hid at the first sign of trouble. The  _ demon _ who carved her way through battlefields without expression or remorse. Whose silence killed her only friends and family. Who soured everything with her presence.

Was any of that true? Or was it only self-flaggation? Guilt and grief turning itself inward, freezing her in place and eating her alive for matters she couldn’t have controlled even if she’d known to try… 

The Agarthans murdered her brother. She showed them mercy, and they repaid her with genocide. It wasn’t her fault that she’d tried to be kind. Mercy. Kindness. These are not weaknesses to be guilty over, or apologized for.

Her children were eternal. That should have been a gift, and her enemies corrupted it. Perhaps it was still a mistake, but a mistake born of love does not render a person irredeemable. 

Everything that had happened since… Yes, she had made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. She’s also paid for them, and will continue paying for them, and will probably make a lot more. But blaming herself? Hating herself as Rhea had—as Dimitri  _ did _ —was doing no one any service at all; especially not her. 

If anything, all the guilt, all the self-hatred, and lies and hiding was just making matters worse.

She looks with fresh eyes at the wretched man before her, and sees only the beautiful, sad boy she’d had the privilege of knowing up to this point. Byleth has no idea what the intervening time has been like for him, but there is one thing she knows with absolute certainty: 

“You are not a monster.”

He scoffs and shakes his head. “You have no idea the things I’ve done.”

“Then tell me.” She holds out her hand to him. “Let me tend your wound. I’ll listen to anything you have to say. But you still won’t be a monster.” 

Finally, Dimitri’s look at her. She cannot read the expression on his face, stoic as it is, and he neither moves toward her nor away. It is up to her to cross the space between them, and lay her fingers gently upon his chest. 

The magic gathers in her veins, warm and tingling with a near electric pulse. This time, when she realizes her mistake, there’s time to correct it. She chooses not to. Instead, Byleth watches Dimitri’s wound close up. She sees the confusion and wonder pass across his face before the world sways and blackens around her. 

#

A warm, pungent weight holds Byleth down. It’s strange, but not alarming enough to jolt her from her slumber. In fact, given the way her day was going, it’s rather comfortable. There’s something about the smell which is familiar enough to register as “safe” within her half-conscious mind, and thus she remains prone as her awareness returns in pieces. 

She’s lying on straw and leather; a soldier’s pallet. Her head is pillowed by a roll of the same, but the thing on top of her is a blend of fur and… wool? She fingers the fabric a moment before opening her eyes to squint at it. Flickering firelight renders the material a strange colour that might be blue by daylight. 

Leather creaks nearby, before the crackling flames rise a little higher. By their glow she sees Dimitri leaning over the make-shift hearth, goading the embers with a tarnished length of iron. 

His cloak is missing. It takes her a moment more to connect that with the strange blanket stretched over her. 

Byleth doesn’t want to sit up. The pallet is warm, and the silence is comforting, and she’s still so  _ tired _ —though at least she hasn’t slept for days. 

_ Has  _ she slept for days? Panic pounding in her wrists and neck, Byleth levers herself upright and casts a look about the room for any indication of passed time. 

They’re back in the audience hall. Dimitri has clearly taken the time to sort through supplies and shift things around. The doors at the end are closed and barred. A refuse pile blocks the entry to the old office. In the cleared area that remains, he’s fashioned two pallets—including the one she occupies—and drawn up an old wooden bench for use as a table. A small cooking pot rests there, lid covering something that smells like cat meat stew, beside a stack of somewhat dirty plates and utensils. 

He’s been busy. Very busy. Still, the window above the dias is dark, just as she thinks it should be given that night was well on its way when she passed out. Maybe it was only a night… 

“A day.”

Byleth turns back to find Dimitri watching her from where he sits, cross legged, on the second pallet. He tips forward, elbows against his knees, and rests his chin upon his knuckles. 

“It’s been a full day?” she translates.

He inclines his head.

Dammit. She sighs and throws herself back onto the pallet, burrowing back into the warmth of his cloak. “I’ve got to stop doing that.”

Silence. 

After a few minutes, she says, “I’m sorry I left you alone again.”

Belatedly, Byleth realizes how much that statement is attempting to apologize for. She winces and rolls onto her side so that she can look at him. Dimitri is still watching her, gaze cold and impassive.

“Are—we  _ are  _ still alone?”

Another, slight nod.

“No one came with you?”

Silence. 

Byleth presses her lips together, becoming unnerved despite herself. Why isn’t he talking to her? He was before she passed out. Begrudgingly, maybe, but still talking.

“How long has it been since the battle?”

“The Battle of the Monastery, you mean?” The question seems rhetorical. Byleth nods, regardless. His answering smile is sharp and mean. “In three days we’ll mark the establishment of Garreg Mach. It’s rather ironic you chose this year, this  _ week _ , to reappear.”

For a single, blessed moment Byleth is confused. If it was three days to the festival of Garreg Mach, that made this the twenty-second of Ethereal Moon. There was nothing ironic about that which she could see. Sure, if the monastery were still active they would be preparing for the ball in a few days time but—

Oh.

“Five years?” she whispers. This time, his silence is all the answer she needs.

Byleth eases herself back up off the floor. It seems silly to laze around as she processes that information. Five years. They’d all promised to meet here again, five years from the festival they’d celebrated together. She’d known it had been a long time, based purely on the state of decay and the growth her friends showed, but the weight of it is horrendous. Five  _ years _ . 

Her next thought is almost worse. “Is that why you came back here? To meet with the others?”

More silence. 

Byleth swallows the urge to yell at him. Losing her temper wouldn’t solve anything. She’d left him for five years. He had a right to be angry… even if she hadn’t meant to, and she’d apologized. 

Even as she thinks those things, worse thoughts begin to rear their heads. Thoughts which  _ should  _ have occurred to her before all this, but hadn’t whether due to her own confusion, or the impending frostbite, or the exhaustion. 

Whatever the case, it finally strikes her that Dimitri is  _ alone _ . 

Most of the Blue Lions were nobles. They had responsibilities not only to their Crown Prince—their King; he had to have been crowned by now, surely—but to their specific territories.  _ Their  _ absences could more or less be explained. All of them, except for one person. One man who had vowed to never leave Dimitri’s side. One man whose entire world rested upon Dimitri’s shoulders. Whose loyalty and honor was beyond questioning or reproach. He, above them all, ought to be here. Why hadn’t she noticed?

Because she hadn’t wanted to. In her heart, Byleth already knows the answer. She asks the question anyway.

His terse response leaves her dizzy with grief.

Dead. Dedue is dead. 

The sweet, quiet man she shared tea with in the greenhouse every Sunday morning, who never asked her to speak more than she’d been wont, who braved hatred from strangers and kin alike for the chance to save his people, was dead. Gasping through the onset of tears, Byleth also remembers what Dimitri had flung at her just a short while ago; that he and Dedue had risked everything trying to find her after she fell. 

Please, no. Anything but that.

“When? How?”

This time, Dimitri shakes his head. He reaches down, to the wide gap between their pallets, and slides something across the floor to her. Byleth picks it up without question. 

A piece of paper? No. It’s a book. A very thin, cheaply printed book with rusted stables for binding and questionable stains smearing the front page. 

“I’ve answered enough of your questions,” says Dimitri. “Now you’re going to answer mine.”

Momentarily distracted from her grief, Byleth opens the book and freezes when she sees the block-print headline:

THE CHURCH OF SEIROS: A CULT OF MONSTERS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~Happy Holidays, everybody~


	6. Lies that Bind Us

**Day 22 Ethereal Moon, Year 1185 **

The author of this pamphlet had clearly taken into account that most soldiers and peasants aren’t well educated. The sentences are short and direct, and the ideas presented in a way a child could understand. In it, Byleth finds what could charitably be described as an alternate account of the history of Fodlan; one in which her family, her bloodline, were the aggressors in all that transpired. 

The dragons—the  _ monsters _ —were invaders, the pamphlet insists, who laid waste to humanity without rhyme or reason, and imposed upon them a religion of their own device crafted to make unwitting slaves of the survivors. It was only by rooting them out and burning their nests that humanity could hope to throw off the shackles of the crests and other magics which had been used to suppress them. 

When she reaches the end, Byleth is not surprised—not even the slightest bit—when she finds the author’s name printed and signed. Edelgard von Hresvelg, Empress of the Adrestian Empire. 

It is an effort to meet Dimitri’s gaze again. “It isn’t true.”

More stony silence. His gaze flicks to something behind her. Byleth turns, but there’s only empty air and the distant, closed door. He’s returned to staring at her when she looks back at him; expectant. 

Confused, but feeling like she has to say something, she offers, “This isn’t how it happened.”

“How would you know?”

The answer halts on her tongue. 

How  _ does  _ she know? She was there? Yes, she had been, but only for part of it. The rest Seteth and Rhea had relayed to her only a short while ago, and even then, only in part. She believes their account, but… 

Explaining any of it to Dimitri comes with a lot of other explanations in tow. Also, ‘Because my family said so’ isn’t a very concrete argument. Even if she knew they would never lie to her about what transpired after her ‘death’—which she did—no one else had any reason to believe their word alone. 

In fact, most everyone had good cause  _ not _ to believe them. Regardless of their reasons, the Church had been lying to everyone for most of a millenia. The only difference between reality and these accusations was which lies had been told, and why.

Byleth sighs. She can explain everything she knows—bar the missing thousand-odd years she’d been more-or-less unconscious—but she has no proof. Her father’s journal, the most obvious hint near to hand, might still be in the abbey. It might also be rotted through or stolen. Even then, he’d only had hints of the truth, himself. 

There’d also been at least one portrait of Rhea on the premises which was rendered some time ago—long before her seeming age would allow—but that wasn’t foolproof, either. And even if she could get into the recreated throne room… hm. That wasn’t a terrible idea, actually, assuming that Edelgard hadn’t destroyed it in the interim.

“It’s a long story,” she says, slowly, “And we may need to take a walk-about if you want confirmations.”

He continues to stare; flat and unyielding. After a moment, she decides to take that as agreement to listen, the best she’s going to get, and searches for a place to begin. As her gaze darts around the room—at everything but him—it comes to rest upon her sword, leaning against the haphazardly stacked stonework of the hearth. 

Byleth reaches for it. Dimitri tenses. 

She stops, fingers caressing the bones, to look at him. Her hopes sink as she reads the fear in his eye. He doesn’t trust her anymore. That’s fair, she tells herself. Maybe if she repeats that often enough it will stop hurting.

Moving carefully and with purpose, Byleth lifts the sword of the creatore carefully by its spinal blade. She lays it across her palms and presents it to him in offering. That her posture is reminiscent of a knight offering fealty to their lord does not escape her. Nor does Dimitri miss this, she thinks, as his gaze flickers between the blade and—and that spot off to her side again. What is he looking at?

Again, Byleth follows his line-of-sight over her shoulder. There’s nothing there. 

She shifts uncomfortably, trying to ignore the feeling of eyes on the back of her head as she focuses on the task at hand: baring her soul before the man she—

To her friend, who may not want to be that much longer.

“I don’t know where to start, but this is sort of where it started for me, so… I guess it’s as good a place as any.” 

The sword gleams dully in the firelight. She runs her thumbs over it, temporarily mesmerized both by the subtle patterns on the bone and a sudden re-awareness of what it  _ is _ . She’s never discussed it with anyone in frank terms before, and some of the revulsion she’d long since dismissed creeps back in as she orders her thoughts.

“Do you know what this is made of? Can you identify the material?”

Dimitri’s brow knots as he looks between her and the blade. He shakes his head. 

“Touch it.”

“You want me to touch a relic,” he asks, flatly.

“I know we had rules against that—and I’ll explain why later—but this one won’t hurt you. I promise. Please? It’s important.”

“You know  _ why  _ they turn people into demonic beasts? And you let Sylvain carry that around?” His voice is sharp, demanding. She flinches.

“I didn’t know at first,” Byleth amends, “What happened to Miklain was just as much a surprise to me as you, I swear it. But I did find out later, yes.”

“And you chose to hide it.”

“It’s not that simple.” 

“How? How is it not that simple? We  _ trusted  _ you.”

“I know! I’m trying to explain, Dimitri, just touch the damn blade.”

He exhales sharply through his nose, the sound disbelieving and annoyed. But to Byleth’s relief, he tugs off one leather glove and puts his hand to the blade. Immediately, his expression changes. Confusion wars with something else—recognition maybe? 

After a long moment examining the material, letting his fingers run over the faint grooves, and the flat inner edges of the processes, he shrugs.

“It isn’t a material I know,” he says, though he doesn’t sound sure. 

“It’s bone,” she says, and sees the truth register in his eyes. “This sword is all that remains of the Goddess Sothis; her original body.”

Dimitri yanks his hand away as though scaled. He stares at Byleth, and the sword, and for a breath-stopping moment she thinks he’s going to call her a liar. He believed in the Goddess, she knew, but his beliefs differed from the teachings of the Church in a very crucial way. What was it he said after the Founding Day Ball? ‘The Goddess watches down on us, that is all…’

He did not believe the Goddess was the sort to get involved. Did that extend to believing that she had never walked the earth to begin with? 

But she sees also the moment that his perception of the weapon adjusts. His eye widens as he traces the jut of processes down the sanded and flattened vertebrae that comprise the segmented blade; the manner in which they twine into the sword’s length. She remembers having that moment herself. Once you see the connection, you never look at it the same way again.

Once more, Dimitri briefly touches the blade’s surface, feeling the polished ivory. More slowly, he shakes his head.

“It’s made to resemble a spine, certainly. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Everything.” She lowers the blade to rest on her lap, takes a steadying breath. “They’re all bone. All the relics, including the four sacred weapons once wielded by the Saints.”

“You just said  _ this  _ sword was all that remained of the Goddess.”

“It is. The other relics weren’t crafted from her body. They were crafted from the bodies of her children. Each one carries a name and… and you recall the crest stones, from the crypt?”

Dimitri frowns, but inclines his head slightly.

“Hearts. Dragons don’t have flesh hearts, like humans do. Ours are made of stone.”

His lips purse, eye narrowing as he catches the inclusion. Byleth waits for him to say something, but instead his gaze flicks over her shoulder again. and Byleth stiffens. What—? 

Her hand slaps over her ear before she thinks better of it. She is such an idiot sometimes. He’d already seen, though. Her shoddy disguise had never been enough to hide the changes. She ought to be more surprised it took  _ this  _ long. When had it happened? During the fight? When she passed out afterward? Either way, this explains his increased hostility since she woke.

Taking a deep breath, Byleth tugs her falling ponytail until her hair tumbles loose around her face. There isn’t any more point in pretense, and she didn’t like having it up, anyway. 

“I’m not fully draconic,” she says haltingly, unsure if she’s lying. Her current body isn’t fully draconic, that much is true, but she has a stone heart—her  _ original  _ stone heart—and she is technically the progenitor of their race. 

Why does everything have to be so convoluted? 

“Father was human, for all that Rhea gave him a boon of her blood some time ago. Turns out, he was at least a hundred-and-fifty-odd years old when he died.”

She pauses, waiting for a moment as Dimitri continues to stare at her. After several, increasingly awkward moments of silence she clears her throat and continues, “So, ah, as I was saying, the relics—”

“She was telling the truth, then?”

“Huh?”

“Edelgard. You’re all—none of you are  _ human _ —” His voice is a bare whisper, his brow furrowed in anger, and horror, and heartbreak. A hint of that old hysteria is rising again, but it isn’t as sharp as it had been when Edelgard betrayed him. He’s used to this, now. “She was telling the truth.”

Byleth realizes her misstep and shakes her head fiercely. “No. It’s more complicated than that—”

She reaches for his hand and he yanks away from her. His single eye burns in fury. “The church? The  _ Goddess _ ? They lied! You all lied!”

“Because they killed us,” she snaps. “They drug my children—drug  _ me _ —from our homes. Boiled the flesh from our bodies. Fashioned our bones into these—these  _ things _ .”

She gestures sharply to the sword in her lap, barely noticing Dimitri’s flinch as she glowers at it. This hateful, horrible thing that always felt so right and so very wrong in her hands. It is a useful tool. It’s also a reminder, in the most visceral way, of all her multitude of mistakes. 

Byleth swallows. The temptation to get lost in those thoughts is strong, but she beats it back with another, simpler impulse. 

Turning away from Dimitri, Byleth surges to her feet, and hurls the sword as strong and hard as she can. 

It flies straight and true across the room. The pile of discarded furniture blocking the office doorway explodes, sending wooden debris flying everywhere in a puff of woodchips and dust. From the way the sword glows with her anger, it’s a wonder nothing catches fire.

In the quiet aftermath, she can almost hear Dimitri’s frantic heart beating. Beating like hers never will. 

The accusation, when it comes, is almost heartbreaking in its quiet reverence. “You’re the Goddess?” 

“Yes,” she says, eyes still locked upon her glowing remains. She won’t look at him. She can’t.

“Did you kill her?”

“Kill who?”

“Byleth.”

“No—Stars and mercy. No.” Eyes closing, her fingers thread into her hair, pushing it back out of her face. Her eyes close, and she takes a shaky breath. He’s confused, she reminds herself as she tries not to hyperventilate. Of course he’s confused. She’s doing a piss-poor job of explaining herself. “Seiros—Rhea— _ The Church _ said I was going to be reborn one day. You know that. There’s a whole festival dedicated to it.”

“In Blue Sea Moon. Not Wyvern Moon.” 

“She didn’t know when it would happen. She’d been trying for centuries.” 

“Seiros,” he interprets. Then, “Rhea.”

She sighs. “Yes.”

His next question is slow, but there’s an awareness coming back into his voice that would be promising if it weren’t also cruel and mean. He’s starting to understand. But his anger isn’t going away. “So, if you’re the Goddess, then why is Edelgard still alive? Why are people dying? Why—”

“Edelgard isn’t wrong to accuse the Church of misinformation. You  _ were _ lied to. However, Edelgard is wrong about which parts were lies, and why those lies were told,” Byleth says, trying to cut him off before he got too worked up. 

Turning every so slightly toward him, she forces herself not to flinch at the hatred burning in his remaining eye. “I am  _ a _ Goddess, that was always true. But the Church told you that I’m the only one, and that I’m all powerful. That part isn’t… it isn’t true. I can’t snap my fingers and stop a war, no matter how much I want to. I couldn’t even if I were at full strength, which I very much am not.” 

“Then what good are you?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Byleth flounders, open mouthed, for several moments before finally spreading her hands wide in helpless confusion. 

Dimitri doesn’t look at her as he rises. When she tries to reach for him, all he says is “Don’t. If you are Byleth, then don’t,” before passing her to unbar the audience chamber door.

The door closes behind him. His footsteps trail away. The world is silence and encroaching darkness as the glow of her sword, and the embers of the fireplace, flicker and die. 

###  #

There are a million things that need her attention, but Byleth can’t focus on them. She eats a portion of the stew Dimitri made, not caring that its cold and congealing. She barely tastes it, but her stomach stops complaining. That’s something.

Instinct screams at her to reach for what little power she’d been able to regain during her single day’s worth of unconsciousness, and rewind that whole conversation. If she could keep her temper better, or order her thoughts properly, maybe Dimitri wouldn’t storm off like that. If she showed more compassion for what he’d been through—what he’d lost—because of her, maybe he wouldn’t turn away. 

And she would know, for the rest of her life, that he would have left if she hadn’t manipulated him. Worse, she would  _ know  _ that she manipulated him. 

Instead, she drapes his forgotten cloak around her shoulders, stokes the fire, and spends the next few hours braiding her hair a hundred different ways as she waits. Waits for what? She isn’t quite sure. Maybe he’ll come back. 

And perhaps her children will spontaneously rise from the dead.

At some point Byleth must have drifted off again because she wakes to a world tilted sideways, brilliant sunlight glinting through the window, a burnt out hearth, and stiff, frozen fingers. 

Closing her eyes, Byleth considers a moment how low her energy reserves are and whether or not she can spare the effort of warming herself. Freeing herself from the void, on top her self-alterations, had consumed a large portion of the energy she’d gained over the past five years. She’d used up the remainder braving winter exposure and healing Dimitri. A single day’s sleep and a short nap hadn’t restored much. She needs to be careful. 

She  _ needs  _ to act like the human she was raised to be. When had she gotten so soft? 

Annoyed with her growing dependencies upon magic, Byleth spends a short while rubbing enough feeling back into her hands to light a fire the proper way. Then she spends some time on stretches and limbering herself up before allowing herself to consider everything from the night before: the conversation, her confession… Dimitri’s disappearance.

He’d left his cloak behind. Guiltily, she fingers the matted, dirty fur stitched haphazardly over top the Faerghus Blue wool. 

Should she have gone after him? At the time, it felt like doing so would only provoke a worse fight, especially given his parting words. But he hadn’t taken his cloak, and she’d had the fire to keep her warm. What if… 

She has to go after him. That’s all there is to it. Go after him, give him his cloak back, and if he still wants nothing to do with her then she’ll just—

Byleth swallows back the rising hurt and anger. 

She’ll just figure something out, if it comes to that. Maybe she’ll go after Leonie and Luca. Or maybe she’ll try Zanado. Rhea may be… Rhea may be… She flinches from the incomplete thought.  _ Seteth and Flayn _ could still be there, waiting for her. And if not them, Indech and Macuil were both alive somewhere. There are things to be done, she tells herself. There are other people to protect. 

Even if she knows, deep down, that she will always regret leaving things with Dimitri like this.

From the old officer’s scattered belongings, Byleth picks out a patched wool cloak and a mended rucksack. She packs in one of the bedrolls alongside a hunting knife, some rope, a change of clothing that looks like it can be made to fit her, and some other assorted odds and ends. A flintstone is a particularly welcome addition. She doesn’t find any kind of traveling gear, but there are other places to search before she leaves the Monastery proper. 

The last thing to make it onto her person is the sword. She approaches it, blade still protruding from what looks like Rhea’s old desk, where she’d left it the night before. Though the relic no longer glows—and even when it was, it never posed any threat to  _ her _ —Byleth still hesitates before pulling it free. 

As ever, the weight is a relief and a curse, all at once. She sheathes it at her side, and actively shoves away the newfound memory of once waking—Briefly. So briefly—to mind-eating pain and the screams of her children. 

When finally Blyeth leaves the audience hall, she leaves the hearth burning behind her. The fire isn’t likely to spread, she feels, but even if it does she isn’t sure that would be a bad thing. If the abbey collapsed, maybe the Empire would leave its skeleton alone. Given the state they’ve left in it thus far, she can’t imagine they would spend the resources to fix the place. 

Something about that nibbles at the back of her mind; waiting for her to pay attention to it. More important in the moment, however, are the two corpses waiting in the hallway. Rather, the cats gathered around them, gnawing at the bodies. 

Some of the older cats glance in her direction, or flick their ears at her. A few kittens offer her quiet hisses. Only one, a large black tom with a distinctive white patch upon his breast, stops its feasting long enough to wind about her legs before it returns to its meal. 

“You may want to slow down,” Byleth says softly, “I know it seems like a large feast now, but there’s a long winter to go.”

A few of the cats lift their heads again, ears perking toward her. She tips her head in return. “I’m sorry you were reduced to this, too. Did the soldiers feed you at all while we were away?”

There isn’t an answer, not that she expected one, precisely. Regardless, just as the day before, there remains the feeling these beasts are aware of her meaning to one degree or another. A second cat, little more than lanky kitten, disengages from the group to rub against her leg and sniff about her boot.

“Well, I hope they didn’t mistreat you. I apologize, but I can’t stay long. Not yet. But I’m glad you’re watching over the place for us. And we will be back. Or, at least, I will.”

Maybe she shouldn’t be making promises, even if the cats would never be able to hold her accountable for them. Still, it makes her feel a little better when the kitten purrs against her boots before running to pounce upon one of its siblings.

Encouraged, Byleth asks, “You didn’t happen to see where my friend went, did you?”

The black tom stretches and stands. He flicks his tail twice, turns and trots for the stairs. Bemused, Byleth follows.

###  #

Byleth follows the tom down the stairwell by sound alone. She can see in dim light, certainly, but with the doors to the antechamber closed and no windows in this part of the building, the stairwell and room beyond are pitch black. Somehow, it doesn’t feel dangerous, this darkness. All the paranoia of the day before leeched away with the dawn, and the deaths of the Empire soldiers. Perhaps, in that respect, Dimitri was right to kill them. If they’d been left alive, they would undoubtedly have a manhunt going for the parties responsible for their fellows’ murders. Dimitri running off on his lonesome would have left them both in a sour position. 

Small favours, she supposes. 

Similarly, she would consider this sudden carefree attitude a problem, except there’s no evidence in favour of being careful. The only noises belong to her and her feline companion and the only smells are those which make sense: her own unwashed odor, the cat’s musk, and the faintest scent of death. It’s too cold for decomposition to set in, and now that the bodies have mostly frozen the stench has been reduced dramatically. 

Despite her thoughts on the subject—or due to the lack of strong smell—Byleth trips over the corpse still propped at the end of the stairs. She catches herself after a moment’s reeling, steps into the man’s stomach with a sickening squealsh, and stumbles to a landing on the floor below. 

The tom pitter-pats ahead of her, pausing where she approximates the door to the abbey should be. A scratching of claw upon wood confirms her guess. 

“Thank you,” Byleth whispers to the cat. It mewls, then scampers back in the direction of the stairwell. 

Left to her own devices, Byleth feels her way to the door and pauses with her hand pressed to the wood. This door had been open, when last she’d passed through. That’s a decent sign, she thinks, and pushes against one panel.

It catches; barred on the other side. 

She pushes again, harder this time. Whatever is against the door holds firm. Byleth frowns, and backs away from the door. 

“Dimitri?” she asks, raising her voice to be heard through the door. There’s no guarantee he’s there, of course. He might have only closed the door to prevent her from following him directly, had she attempted to catch up last night. With the door blocked, she’d have been forced to give up or take one of the various paths around the abbey, giving him plenty of time to out pace her.

Then again…

Byleth approaches the door again, leans in, and inhales deeply through her nose. Mostly what she smells is wood, that same faint tinge of rot, herself, and… smoke. Faint traces of smoke. It could be from upstairs, but she doesn’t think so. 

It’s then she remembers the firepit just inside the door. She sighs, in mixed frustration and relief, and leans her forehead against the door. 

“Dimitri, if you’re in there, I—I have your cloak.”

It was silly to think he would respond to that, wasn’t it? She feels more and more foolish as the seconds tick. Just as she feels forced to accept that he either isn’t in there, or isn’t answering her, she hears something scrape against the other side. It isn’t the bar moving—the sound is too light for that—but she imagines someone’s hand placed against the wood. 

Someone else is breathing on the other side.

Another minute passes, before Byleth says, “If you aren’t ready to talk, that’s okay. I’ll leave it out here.” 

She pauses, throat clogged with hope. Still nothing. Without quite knowing what she’s about to say, she opens her mouth again and lets more words tumble forth. “There’s still a few things I need to do. At the monastery, I mean. Some… I doubt there’s anything left, but I’m going to look around. Gather some supplies. See what I can salvage. If you want to join me…”

Was that a slight hitch in the breathing? Or was it only her imagination? 

She could try going around the building and peering through the vines that were growing through the windows. Even the thought of doing that feels somehow invasive, though. 

“You’re always welcome to join me,” she finishes, and sets his folded cloak down at the base of the door. “I’m going to head out soon, to find some of the others. Maybe not today, but probably tomorrow. If you want to talk before that, you know where to find me. I’ll, um, I’ll check back in later? Okay?”

Byleth stands there, heart twisting, for what feels like a long time. Eventually, though, she has to admit that—if he is in there—he doesn’t want to talk. 

With a deep breath, Byleth takes a moment to consider her options, then turns for the dormitories and her old quarters. She’ll look for her father’s journal first, then anything that might be salvaged of her old gear, or his. It seems like a good enough place to start.

###  #

If it weren’t for the dead and dying hedges just beyond the archways at the other end of the plaza, and the missing house banners by the school room doors, the Officer’s Academy would look exactly as they left it. The doors are closed, preventing her from witnessing any destruction inside, and the windows are altogether in better repair than the rest of the facilities. Why the garrison hadn’t used these rooms she isn’t sure. It would have been easier to shovel a path to the academy, where the overhang sheltered it from the worst of the snow, than keep the open walkway to the Abbey clear. 

Nothing about this garrison was making much sense, though. 

Byleth passes the academy by, pulling her stolen cloak tighter around her shoulders as a bitter wind whips through the mountain pass. She’d left her hair braided back like Ingrid’s last night, and is grateful for her foresight. The bits of hair that had pulled loose in her sleep are bad enough, flying into her eyes and mouth at inopportune moments. Unbound, it would have gone from a distraction to a hinderance. She should probably cut it. 

The wind dies down as she reaches the sheltering shadow of the old training facility. Its doors stand open, with sunlight beating down through the open roof to illuminate a weed-choked square of earth and some rather resilient ivy clinging to the pillars. Byleth sighs, turning away from the sight of broken and scattered practice dummies, to the dormitories down the row. Her heart sinks further. 

This section of dorms, which once housed her, Dedue, Dimitri, and a few other students who weren’t as insistent on the standards of Status and Rank, has clearly been tossed. The doors are either missing, or standing askew, and various bits of broken and rotting furniture jut from the snow like gravestones. 

Byleth takes a deep breath and plunges on, out of the path dug by the soldiers and into thigh-deep snow. Even with her new gear, the cold is horrific. She grits her teeth and keeps moving. It will be thinner once she reaches the dorms, where the rooms raise up a level from the main concourse. And she has to do this. She needs to be sure, even though she already knows its a lost cause.

Sure enough, when finally she reaches her old room, Byleth needs only one look to know the journal is gone. Her furniture is mostly missing—likely contributing a great deal to the pile outside—and none of her gear remains at all. The bed frame is on its side, and what very little remains of the mattress lies rotting and scattered across the floor. There is no evidence of any books at all. 

In a fit of temper, she kicks the bedframe three times before moving on to Dedue’s old room. Her breath catches in her throat at the sight of all the scattered books and shattered flower pots. Judging from the faint, wet stench of rot and the dark stains upon the remaining furniture, his room had been transformed into a garden of a different nature. 

“Dead,” Dimitri had said the night before, in a voice so devoid of emotion it was difficult to believe, “Dedue is dead.”

Byleth’s eyes sting. She rubs the heel of one hand over them, trying to keep the tears at bay. Dedue wasn’t the sort to appreciate that kind of sentiment. If he were here right now, there was only one thing he would want; he would want her to protect Dimitri. Make sure Dimitri gets to his throne, and that he undoes what damage he can in regards to Duscar. It was the only thing Dedue had ever wanted of anyone. 

And she’s going to disappoint him, because Dimitri wants nothing to do with her. 

Byleth takes a deep breath and a step away from Dedue’s room. Though she considers moving on to Dimitri’s room, there doesn’t seem to be any point. Anything of use in this quarter has long since been removed or destroyed, that much is clear. 

What else was there? She sniffles loudly, and retraces her steps back to the causeway overlooking the cliffs and the cathedral as she tries to fashion a plan going forward. 

The kitchens were disgusting. The greenhouse… she’d only glanced at it the day before, but recalls the jagged edges of broken glass and dead, brown vegetation beyond. No, she doesn’t want a better look at the greenhouse. 

If the student’s dorms were tossed, there’s no doubt the Knight’s quarters have been thoroughly sacked. Same with the monks’ quarters, probably. She hates to even consider what became of Hannemon’s research. Hopefully, her fellow Professor managed to get away with some of it. 

That really only leave the Abbey where Dimitri is hiding, and—

What was that?

Byleth’s gaze sharpens on the cathedral across the chasm. Out near the crumbling Goddess Tower there’s a strange patch of white catching her eye. Snow, she thinks, but frowns. Is it snow, or is it something propped against the stonework, split half inside a shadow? There’s a strange slash of black cutting across it… 

The wind howls, causing her to wince and blink rapidly. As she does, the shape moves; there one instant, then gone. Byleth frowns, moving closer to the cliffside as though it will help her see, and stops as she finds shape again—standing by the well. A short, slight figure standing stock still.  Now that it’s firmly within the shadow of the cathedral, Byleth can make out what appears to be a white skirt and black bodice; long black hair unaffected by the wind. 

Goosebumps prickle down her arms as the figure raises one hand in a stiff, jerky movement; beckoning to her.

Another slap of wind across her face. Byleth flinches, and when she looks again the figure is gone. Like it had never been there at all. 

Despite that, a cold sort of certainty churns in Byleth’s mind, backing her away from the parapets and sending her running back to the abbey. They weren’t alone after all, and Dimitri didn’t know.

###  #

She bangs her fist against the abbey door until her skin smarts. 

“Dimitri,” Byleth calls for the third time. “Come on. Answer me. Please.”

Still nothing. She growls in frustration and glares accusingly at the cloak still folded by the door. A frigid breeze slips in from the door she’d left open at the other end of the hall, ruffling the fur and giving Byleth just enough light to clearly see both it and the corpse still slumped upon the stairs. Neither have been touched since she last saw them; not even by the cats feasting on the upper floor. Perhaps whoever was in the cathedral was too scared to venture over the bridge.

But if that were the case, why had they beckoned to her? Unless she had imagined it. She could have imagined the whole thing. 

In her heart, Byleth can’t believe either option. She knows what she saw, even if it doesn’t make any sense. And she knows she can’t go investigate without being sure he’s safe; that it  _ is _ him she’s talking to behind this door.

Byleth tries again, “There’s someone in the cathedral. Open up. Please.” 

Through the door, someone sucks in a hasty breath. This is followed by a scraping of wood before one side of the double doors opened. Dimitri braces an arm across the doorway, keeping Byleth on her side of things as he glowers at her. 

“You want me to kill them for you, is that it?”

Swallowing a scream, Byleth snaps, “I’m going to investigate. I thought you should be aware.”

“Ah. So I finally merit an advance warning. How thoughtful of you.” 

Byleth’s teeth grind over several choice responses while she takes a deep, steadying breath. 

“I deserve that. I know I deserve that, okay? But we might have bigger issues at hand, and I—just—I just want you to know where I went. In case something happens. I intend to come back.”

Dimitri’s brow furrow thoughtfully as Byleth turns away. She gets the bridge door open before she hears the abbey door close, followed by footsteps and a whisper of rustling cloth behind her. When she glances back she finds Dimitri tying his cloak around his shoulders. 

The look he gives her when he notices her staring warns Byleth not to say anything about his apparent change of mind, so she doesn’t. She simply nods once to him, and exits out onto the cathedral bridge. With some luck, and a little prayer, there may even be a chance he won’t push her off it as they cross.


	7. GHOSTS OF THE PAST

**Day 23 Ethereal Moon, Year 1185 **

The ruins of yesterday’s battle remain frozen beneath a blanket of snow standing deep upon the broken bridge and thinning beneath the archway above the broken cathedral doors. Byleth and Dimitri pass in silence, neither sparing the dead still sprawled here any more attention than strictly necessary. The bodies have not been moved. That’s all that matters. 

“No tracks.”

Byleth startles at the sound of Dimitri’s voice, then follows his gaze back across the snowy bridge, and further out to the wings of cathedral proper. He’s right. The snow fall is all fresh, unbroken by any tracks save their own. 

The hair on the back of her neck prickles, like she’s being watched. When she turns to him, Dimitri quickly looks away. She hesitates, wondering if she ought to call him on his staring, and ultimately decides better of it. If he wants to stare—to wonder at the changes overcome her—she can’t blame him. She  _ won’t _ blame him. At least he is no longer raging.

“They were over by the Goddess Tower, and the well, when I saw them.” 

They could have gone into the cathedral. 

Byleth narrows her gaze at the building. There aren’t any windows low enough to see through, not on this side, and the light beyond the doors is dim. Between the bad angle, and the sun’s reflection off the snow it’s difficult to see inside, even for her. 

“Did you search the place before you—” Before you carried me inside, she wants to say, and doesn’t. “Before we left?”

Dimitri shakes his head. He doesn’t point out that there’s been a whole day passed while she was unconscious. Any survivors who had been inside had had more than enough time to either escape or plan an ambush. 

He really doesn’t need to. They are both aware of the high probability that this is a trap.

“I’ll check it out. You guard the bridge.” 

Dimitri catches her wrist as she moves away. She looks at his hand, then up at him, and struggles to read the words written behind his tired, dull eye. 

“I’m not leaving,” she says slowly. “I’m not intending to leave you ever again. Not unless you tell me to.”

A sarcastic slice of a smile cuts across his face. “And you ‘intended’ to leave the last time?”

Byleth sighs, and shakes her head. “No. Of  _ course  _ I didn’t—” She cuts off her exasperation and wilts, nodding. “Would you rather we stick together?”

Dimitri drops her wrist like it offends him, but nods. When she moves to enter the cathedral, he’s following at her heels. 

The cathedral had been beautiful, once. Even in its current state that is easy to tell. With sunlight streaming in from the open hole in the ceiling, and dust motes dancing lazily in the air, it could even be said to be beautiful, now. Provided you didn’t look too hard at some of the piles in the corners. 

Not all the bodies had been removed. Whether that was due to neglect, or because these corpses had nothing to do with the battle from five years ago and everything to do with the garrisoned soldiers’ ideas of fun, was anyone’s guess. Rather than make an attempt at deduction, Byleth avoids the shadowy corners and their grizzly contents in favour of scanning the room for signs of passage. 

A sizable snowbank covers the middle of the room, spreading drifts in all directions. The surface is pure white; undisturbed by wind or animals or people. 

Byleth pauses when she reaches the edge of the snowy partition, glancing at the closed doors that lead toward the Goddess Tower, and then behind her to those set opposite; also closed. There are no signs of intruders. Could she have imagined the figure all along?

Possible, she has to admit, though she does not believe it. Her energy may have been flagging, that did not automatically lead to hallucinations. In point of fact, the only hallucination she could ever remember having was that of her former self, Sothis. And that—well, that was complicated. Either way, she does not believe she was primed to fabricate such an event here and now, which should mean there’s another answer.

She takes a step toward the left, intending to investigate the tower, when a creak of rusted hinges draws both their attention. 

The antechamber to the left of the large altar is dark, and difficult to see from where they’re at. Neither of them moves. That way lies the tombs, first of Saint Seiros and further down the throne room of the Goddess—of Byleth—and the resting place of all her children. 

All but five, she corrects, though her heart hurts at the thought of what may have become of Rhea. 

The door creaks again, louder and more insistent. Is it just the wind, or someone luring them into the dark?

Taking a deep breath, Byleth settles her hand upon her sword hilt and strides into the gloom. After that, the only sounds besides her own are Dimitri’s heavy bootsteps following in her wake.

###  #

The tomb is dark and somehow colder than the air outside. All the torches that used to burn here are long since extinguished, and Byleth is forced to light a fire in her palm until she can rekindle two for their use. As they skirt the perimeter of Seiros’ tomb, Byleth uses her torch to light every sconce they pass, while Dimitri keeps an eye out for trouble. 

They pause when they reach the gap in the wall. The entrance to the lower tomb lies open. 

Byleth sucks in a startled breath. She’d thought about taking Dimitri down there the night before, but hadn’t; in part because her explanation had gone so poorly, and in part because she’d assumed it would be locked. 

And here it is, standing wide open for any graverobber to find. 

Were her children still down there? 

Probably not. 

Swallowing against her rising gorge, Byleth forces herself to turn away and continue their slow survey of the tomb. It would be better to be certain they were alone, than foolishly run downstairs and leave their backs exposed. She tells herself this on a loop as they complete their task.

A good half-candlemark later, they stand before the supposed sarcophagus of Seiros and look out over the freshly re-lit tomb. Nothing moves but for their shadows, cast flickering in the firelight. 

Dimitri hasn’t said anything, but Byleth feels his gaze upon her all the same. 

“Don’t say it could have been the wind,” she says into his silence.

His tone is utterly emotionless as he replies, “Those doors are solid wood. There wasn’t any wind strong enough.”

Feeling as though his agreement ought to make her feel better than it did, Byleth nods. At least they aren’t going to fight about it. 

Keeping her torch in hand, she makes for the stairwell to the lower chambers. Dimitri falls into step behind her. 

Much as it had the first time, the trip below seems to take forever and no time at all. The cavernous tunnel, scored by the dragon claws which made it, encloses around them like a familiar friend. With her newly awakened senses, Byleth can now see the tenuous threads of magic woven into this tunnel, and indeed, the entire mountain itself. They feel like Cethleanne, and that feeling gives her hope. Somewhere out there, Flayn is still alive. If she weren’t, this tunnel—maybe even the entire monastery—would collapse.

Byleth wonders if that had been Flayn’s idea, or Rhea’s. It was as much a self defense method as it was a shackle on the younger girl. Flayn  _ could  _ leave, but with this much of her magic tied into the monastery it would always be her home. Unless she was willing to let it fall.

When they finally reach the tomb, they find it still lit by the same sourceless green glow, and a sob rips from Byleth’s throat. 

All the sarcophagi are open. 

Dropping her torch carelessly upon the stone floor, Byleth quickly lowers herself over the side of the raised entryway and drops to the level below. Dimitri scrambles after her as she runs to the nearest sarcophagi. It doesn’t matter what her senses are telling her—what common sense told her already—she still needs to see. And what she sees is emptiness. 

Byleth works her way quickly down that side of the room, checking each and every sarcophagi while trying to remind herself that this does not necessarily mean Edelgard has taken them all. It could have been Rhea, if she’d gotten away from the battlefield. Maybe even Seteth. 

Or it could have been the purple-skinned man who’d kept turning up on the battlefields. The Argarthan sorcerer. The alchemist; she doesn’t know for sure that’s what he was, but it makes a terrible sort of sense.

Dimitri catches her elbow sharply just as they reach the center of the room, and Byleth’s head snaps up at a presence ahead of them. 

“What are you doing?” he demands. 

Ignoring him, Byleth searches that side of the room with her eyes. There’s no one there, but the sense of presence lingers. It isn’t one of her direct descendants, she’s sure, but they are of her line. There may be more than one. 

Dimitri shakes her once, hard enough to get her attention. 

Startled, Byleth looks up into his blazing blue eye and says the only words that seem to matter, “They took them.”

“Took  _ what _ ?” His scowl deepens. “We came down here following  _ something _ . Or did you forget?”

Byleth winces. She had forgotten, yes. Once again, she’d slipped the minute her children were immediately involved. She needs to stop doing that. She needs to be  _ better _ .

“I haven’t seen anyone, have you?”

“No,” he admits, reluctantly. His grip slackens as he casts a nervous glance back toward the exit, and Byleth remembers the last time they were down here. Of course he’s nervous. 

“I could probably convince it to close up, while we’re here,” she says softly, “If that would make you feel better.”

The look he gives her is inscrutable as ever, but he shakes his head almost imperceptibly. “I would rather not be trapped.”

Hoping the words “with you” weren’t attached to that statement, Byleth nods her own agreement and gingerly moves away from him. His fingers relax, and release her. 

More for his sake than hers, Byleth keeps her sword at the ready as she mounts the stairs to the throne. It sits flush against the cavern wall, the jade seat seeming to glow faintly in the strange, diffuse light of the room. There are a few decorative urns set nearby; all of them are empty. 

She pauses before the throne, looking at it. The presence is directly in front of her, like someone is sitting in the seat itself. The seat…

Byleth touches it gently, then turns and sits down. 

Dimitri, halfway up the steps himself, pauses and watches her. She watches him. They stay this way for several of his heartbeats before Byleth begins to feel silly.

She shrugs, and pushes some stray hair back behind her ears. “Well, it was worth a try.”

Dimitri snorts. “What did you expect to happen?”

“I’m… not sure, really. I can sense something—someone—here. Right in this spot. But unless Rhea buried someone beneath the throne itself… actually, she may have. I don’t know why she  _ would _ have, she’s usually more careful with the family.”

Then again, whomever this was they weren’t one of Rhea’s siblings. 

Dimitri is staring at her again. Finally, he says, “You’re talking about the  _ crest stones _ ?”

“I told you, they’re—”

“Dragon hearts.”

“Yes. But they’re more than just that,” she says with a sigh. “They’re  _ my _ children, Dimitri. And I—I made my children in my image. I made them immortal.”

“Then how were they killed? You said the Agarthans killed them all, but—” He pauses, brow furrowing. Perhaps he has begun to understand.

“I don’t know what would happen if someone managed to shatter a crest stone,” Byleth says slowly, shuddering even as she suggests such a thing. “And I don’t want to know. What I do know, is that those crest stones aren’t just their hearts; they also contain my children’s souls. Each of them is still very much alive, and aware enough of their situation that they’re in a lot of pain.”

“That’s why the relics are dangerous,” he says in soft, muted horror. 

Byleth nods. “They recognize people with crests as part of the family. They won’t hurt family. But when someone they only recognize as ‘human’ tries to tap into their power… I’d have to ask them individually, but given what happened I can’t imagine any of them reacting with anything but violence.”

Dimitri’s jaw clenches, and he casts another long look at the exit behind him. Then, he takes another step up toward the dais. “What  _ did  _ happen? You said Edelgard was telling the truth, but not. Which parts?”

Byleth does not smile at this question, for it isn’t an easy answer on anyone’s part. Still, the fact that he’s willing to ask questions does help. However hostile he may appear, he’s still trying to understand; trying to listen.

She scoots to one side of the too-wide throne and pats the empty space next to her. When Dimitri doesn’t move, she tries not to take it personally. Maybe that was too far, too soon. Instead, she takes a deep breath and begins.

###  #

“I told you that I’m not the only god. I’ll spare you how we all came to exist, at least for now. It doesn’t really matter to this story. Still, it’s important for you to know that I have siblings out there… at least, I did. Once. I’d like to think they’re still out there, somewhere, but—” Byleth shakes her head. She’s already getting off point again.

She really wishes he would take a seat somewhere, if only so he’ll stop staring down at her that way. Even with him on a lower step he’s tall enough to loom.

“We’re not very good at extended cohabitation, my siblings and I. That isn’t a hard rule, but it’s rare to find working groups. The land you call Duscar is the closest example.” Byleth shrugs one shoulder. “To a degree, my brother and I were considered another.”

“Brother?”

“Usir,” says Byleth, smiling at how easily she recalls it. More easily than her brother’s face, though she knows he’d been fair skinned, with orange hair and flaming eyes. “He settled this area first, and when I found the canyons to my liking, he agreed to share the territory. We still kept to separate ends, for the most part.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“Mm. That doesn’t really surprise me. He was… let’s say ‘killed’ for clarity’s sake. He was killed long before I was, and for whatever reason Seiros chose to leave him out of her mythology. I could speculate, but—that’s not really something that needs speculating on right now, is it?”

Dimitri shakes his head. 

“Right. So, Usir and I shared this place, and created our children—Well, sort of, you see Usir adopted—well—” She scoffs abruptly, and leans an elbow on the arm of the throne, placing her face in her hand. “This is going to be difficult without a lot more explanation, actually.”

“Try.”

“It isn’t about trying, it’s about—” She cuts herself off again, cheeks colouring a little. “It’s different, explaining this now, than it would have been then.”

“Having children? Taking consorts?” 

Byleth’s face heats even more. “It wasn’t like that.”

“It must have been like something.”

Steeling herself, Byleth peeks out between her fingers to find Dimitri looking everywhere but her, his own face seeming a little pink despite the green light all around them. His words might be snappish, but the topic is clearly embarrassing for them both. 

She wonders if, in these five years, there’s been someone else in his life. But, she scolds herself, there’s no place for those sorts of thoughts. There never was before, and there couldn’t be now. 

“Gods create species,” Byleth says softly. “Our children often call themselves siblings, especially those born around the same time, but each of them is as unique as the concept they were crafted from.”

At this, Dimitri gives her another strange look, and Byleth smiles wanely.

“My Seiros was born of a lightning strike. My Chihol I pulled, fully formed, from the walls of Zanado itself. I called to my sister in the seas, and she sent me Caduceus who rode in upon the surf to tumble, laughing at my feet. I spent energy in their creation, but I didn’t carry them or nurse them, and they had no fathers in any way you would recognize.”

Byleth paused, considering as she felt the headache begging to take root at the edges of her senses. “Some of my siblings bore in a physical fashion, I think, in the later millenia. I considered myself too young for such things.”

“I… see…” Dimitri sank down upon the steps, sitting near her feet. “And they are all dragons?”

“Yes,” she says. “That is,  _ my _ children are all dragons. Usir’s… Usir had two of his own, that I recall, though only those. They were beautiful, winged children of flame and feather, and they fizzled so very quickly. It broke his heart, watching them die, knowing that he chose their fate himself when he made them.”

Byleth winced as the headache grew a little stronger. She didn’t like that her candence was slipping toward Sothis’, but wasn’t sure how to stop it when she was referencing those old memories. She rubbed her forehead. “The point is, if you meant ‘do all my siblings bear dragons’, then the answer is no. Someone may have created children similar to mine, somewhere out there. The world is vast, and I slept for a very long time. I have no idea what my siblings have been up to. But near Fodlan? No. No one made any dragons but me.”

Dimitri nods slowly, his gaze locked upon the far-off exit of the chamber. “Who made us, then? If not you, then….”

Byleth hesitates. She isn’t sure how well this information will go over. At the same time, that he’d implied believing her story gives her some hope. Maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t think she’s crazy. 

“That’s a bit more complicated.” Hesitantly, Byleth slides off the throne to sit next to him upon the dias. Dimitri’s head turns slightly in her direction, though not enough to see her given his missing eye. He doesn’t move away. 

She rests her cheek upon the cool jade and considers her words carefully as she says, “All the gods’ children I knew of shared one commonality: they’re all born with two distinct forms. A bestial form, like my dragons, and a—mm—a humanoid form. There’s a better word for it, but that language isn’t spoken anymore.

“Anyway, because of the humanoid forms, they can interbreed.” 

Dimitri frowns, turning toward her a little more. She’d always known he was smart, and the understanding in his eyes confirms this. He knows where she’s going. She still needs to say it.

“It didn’t happen often, at first; mostly near territorial borders between the gods’ chosen lands. But it happened often enough. The results were usually the same. The first generation would retain a bestial form as well, often favouring one parent over the other. The second generation out would have… special gifts, like the crests. Third generation had less of that, and so on. At that point, they were called ‘human,’ and often had too many godly parents for anyone to make a singular claim.”

“So no one looks out for us at all,” Dimitri whispers, his voice bitter enough to break her heart all over again.

Perhaps a little too sharply, Byleth says, “Claim or not, I protected the people in my lands.” Then, more sheepishly, she adds, “Usir did more.”

Dimitri says nothing, but she thinks she reads interest in his silence and continues, “Rather than having more of his own brood, Usir looked at all the humans around who—as you said—often went unprotected, and decided that if no one else wanted them, they would be  _ his  _ children. He took in all he could, and I made it clear that they were welcome among my children, as well, though I did not go so far as to claim them at that time. It was something we agreed upon.”

“But he died.”

“He was  _ killed _ ,” Byleth corrects. “He took them in, and they killed him.”

Dimitri sits up, twisting upon the steps to look at her. “All of them? Why?”

Wincing, Byleth shakes her head. “I don’t think it was all of them. It was—there was a group called the Agarthans. They inhabited Usir’s lands the longest, and knew him best. But they… I don’t know. I honestly don’t know why they did what they did. I could speculate, but I won’t. All I know is that he was—his physical form was  _ gone _ .”

“And this means they killed him?”

Rubbing at her forehead, Byleth leans back into the throne and tries to keep a reign on her temper. He’s allowed to question her, she reminds herself. It’s good to have people around to question her. She doesn’t want to be the sort of person who can’t be asked to explain themselves, or admit when she’s made mistakes. 

Even if her head is starting to pound something fierce.

“I know they did, because they told me so. When his lands dissolved into in-fighting and war, I became worried. It lasted a good—oh, I don’t know—century? More? All the fighting seemed to blend together, and it wasn’t like Usir to let his children fight so very long without intervening. Finally, I breached his side of Fodlan in an effort to find him. Instead, I found his heart powering a giant machine in one of their cities. That was the first time they tried to kill me.”

“The first time.”

She nods. “Yes. Instead, I showed them and their ‘alchemists’ the true wrath of a goddess, and then I spent the next few centuries rooting out all their ‘technology’ that was based on killing gods to obtain their power, and restored order to Usir’s kingdoms. I couldn’t do anything for him except find him a place to rest. One day, he may rise again—”

Actually, she may know how to resurrect him. Seiros showed her the path, however inadvertently. That is a very gorey thought to have, and Byleth shunts it aside for the moment. 

“Anyway, I did all that, and then I had to sleep.”

“Sleep,” Dimitri says faintly. Then, to her surprise, he adds, “Like these last five years?”

“Yes, actually. Maybe ‘hibernate’ is a better word. That’s how we regain energy. My children are the same. We have to sleep, sometimes for decades or centuries, or even millenia. Otherwise, we go a little…” Byleth holds one hand out, waggling it from side to side. “Off. No one is meant to stay constant forever.”

“But that isn’t the end of the story.”

“No,” Byleth chokes on the word. She’s reached the hardest part; the bit she still doesn’t quite know how to explain, but she has to. Haltingly, her words echoing through the empty chamber around them, she explains the night that Zanado was stained red with her children’s blood. The night that sealed the fate of so many, even centuries down the line. 

“Seiros created the church after Nemesis fell,” she says toward the end. “It was meant to protect themselves, yes, but I like to think she was also trying to keep the peace in her own way. Seteth definitely was. They made mistakes, but they were also scared and deeply wounded.”

“And that justifies all the lies?”

Does it? Byleth drops the hand from her face and pulls her knees up to her chest. She closes her eyes, listening to the throbbing inside her skull, and tries to come up with an answer. 

“I’m biased,” she admits. “I remember the skin burning off my bones, Dimitri. Sometimes, when I sleep, I hear them screaming. When I touched the weapon that is my grandson, I could feel his pain, too. So much pain. He was only ten-years-old, practically a toddler by draconic standards, and he was  _ slaughtered _ because some power-hungry maniac wanted to be a god. So, yes. A part of me says yes. It was justified. They made mistakes, but they did their best, and it  _ was _ justified.”

“And a part of you doesn’t.”

“And a part of me doesn’t,” she agrees, deflating. “I’m still Byleth. I still know how scared I was of Rhea when I got here. I witnessed her ordering so-called heretics to die in my name. I saw how little of a chance she gave Lonato, even though I also understand that he wasn’t right, either. She—It’s—it’s all fucked up. Just like Duscar.”

“ _ Don’t _ you say that name.”

Rather than argue about it, Byleth closes her eyes and nods. “I won’t. I’m sorry.”

Dimitri says nothing, and for a long while they sit in the silent tomb, each of them lost in their own thoughts.

Just as Byleth is beginning to nod off from exhaustion and the cold, Dimitri says, “What if I believe you? What then? Upon whose head do you place the blame for all of this?”

“A lot of the blame is mine,” she says automatically, though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t give in to such thoughts anymore. Then she shakes her head and forces herself to sit up, placing a hand upon the throne behind her to steady herself. “That’s how I’ve felt, anyway. In truth, I think it’s the Agarthans. I thought I’d killed all their alchemists, but I must have missed some; enough that they were able to rebuild to some extent. And they’re still attempting to harness the power of the gods. Still mutilating my children, and manipulating everyone from the shadows.”

“Not  _ Edelgard _ ?”

The way he sneers her name… Byleth has heard that anger from him before, bone deep and aching the way her heart aches. 

“What if she’s just another victim, Dimitri?”

He shoots to his feet, whirling at her with a snarl more kin to that of an animal than a person. Byleth understands this, so she doesn’t flinch. “How can you say that? You sit here telling me all of this; that you couldn’t ignore the slaughter of your brother, and took it out on any person involved. That you saw  _ your  _ vengeance. You also saw this—” 

He stabs a hand toward the room’s exit, indicating everything within the room and beyond it. The battle that had taken place here, and those who had died defending the monastery. 

“She killed your so-called daughter,” Dimitri informs her. “ _ Rhea _ . Seiros.”

Byleth’s stomach drops. “You don’t know that.”

“No one has seen or heard from her since that day. The last I did see, they had her tied in place. She wasn’t even fighting back.”

Clutching at the throne, Byleth struggles both to keep her temper and her stomach. Her fault. That was her fault. She hadn’t done what Seiros asked, and now— 

Something in the stone gives beneath her hand, even as Dimitri sucks in a sharp breath. When Byleth looks up, she finds him staring at her aghast. Unsure what his issue is, she brushes tears she’d barely noticed from her face and turns to inspect the small catch depressed beneath her hand. 

As she takes her hand away, the front of the throne’s base shifts and eases out just enough that she can coax it open with her fingertips. Inside, tucked into a hollow space, are—

“What are those,” Dimitri asks, both horrified and curious despite himself. 

“Hearts,” she whispers in return. Suddenly, she understands. “Mercy said once that this place was haunted. I think she was probably right.”

Swallowing down the bile, she steels herself and plucks the first heart from the pile. Though shaped like a human’s, the heart is solid as any dragon’s crest stone. It would not have beat in life, either, she thinks as she gently touches the power inside with her own. 

A ragged sob breaks the air behind them both. Byleth twists around, causing Dimitri to take a step back as he looks around in confusion. Though he heard her, he doesn’t see the woman standing at the bottom of the stairs with hair black as coal, and eyes the bright blue of the sky. The woman in a torn and bloody dress, with a hole punched between her ribs. 

Tears roll down Hestia’s cheeks, but her mouth is set in a wide and welcoming smile as she holds out both her hands. Though she doesn’t speak her meaning strikes Byleth all the same: “Welcome home.”

“Byleth?”

She looks up into Dimitri’s confused, half-angry face. That seems to be his default these days, and while she can’t blame him she hates that his life has gone this way. “You can’t see her, can you?”

“Who?”

Byleth’s gaze flickers back to the spectre of Hestia, then down to the stone heart in her hands. An idea strikes her. It may be a bad one. 

“Give me your hand?”

Dimitri stares at her.

“I’ll show you who I mean—or, I’ll try to, anyway. Like with the sword last night.”

She can see the debate raging behind his remaining eye. It takes an unsettlingly long time before he comes to a conclusion, slowly shaking his head. “I’ll take your word on it.”

Meaning he probably doesn’t believe her at all, whispers the negative part of her mind. Or, the rest argues, he’s just had more than enough new information for the day. Only time will tell. 

Nodding at that, Byleth glances back at her mother, then reaches for the next heart when she hesitates. She doesn’t know who these others are, if they are awake or sleeping, or what state they might be in. They may not recognize her, either. 

And so far, it seems they’ve been safely hidden where they are. Perhaps it would be best to let them be, for now. 

When she starts to place Hestia back among them, a sharp chill races through her shoulder. She finds the woman bent over her, one hand hovering just over Byleth’s flesh. Hestia shakes her head and gestures from the heart, to Byleth. 

“You want to come with me? Is that—is that why you led us down here?”

Hestia nods. 

Though she isn’t sure it’s a good idea, Byleth knows she owes the woman this much. “As you wish.” 

Under Dimitri’s incredulous gaze, Byleth closes the rest of the hearts back into their hiding place, and slips Hestia’s into her stolen pack. She gets up, dusting her hands off, and she looks at him. She extends her hand. 

“Will you come with me?”

“Where?”

“Zanado. I need to find the others, and figure out what’s been happening. I can’t just sit on the sidelines.”

Dimitri continues to watch her, his attention wavering between her hand and face and ears. “And Edelgard? What of her?”

“Given what I’ve seen already… I don’t know. But if I have to face her in combat, I will.”

“She dies.” His tone brooks no argument, nor does the hard set of his mouth. “She dies by  _ my _ hand.”

“Is that the price for your help? Are you a mercenary, now? Is that it? You’re a King, Dimitri, shouldn’t you have bigger worries than—”

“Call me whatever you like. Killing her is the only thing that matters. She has to pay for what she’s done, and if you won’t help me—”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then say you will. If you want me to follow,  _ swear it _ by your own name or whatever it is  _ gods  _ swear to.”

Byleth lets the silence between them fill as she tries to settle her own heart. Can she swear this? She doesn’t know if Edelgard is guilty of the things Dimitri blames her for, but Edelgard  _ is _ guilty of many other things. All the lives lost at the monastery, and in the war that followed. The lives the garrison upstairs took when Edelgard stationed them here. Rhea’s life, possibly, and that burns the worst of them all. 

If kings should be above petty revenge, then so should a goddess, whispers the back of her mind. She shuts that down instantly.

“I swear,” Byleth says, just as Dimitri shoulders past her. He pauses. “I swear upon the stars, and my father’s grave, that Edelgard will be brought to justice.”

It’s immediately clear, from the rigidity of his shoulders and the creases at the corners of his mouth, that he does not like this answer, but with a slight inclination of his head Dimitri accepts it all the same. “Then you have my sword. For now.”

“For now,” she whispers, and follows him out of this pit towards the monastery and Zanado. 


End file.
